What do you like best?
For me, starting to use Clarizen Go was like unwrapping a holiday gift from someone who knows me really well. You know when you look up and smile and earnestly mean, "This is just what I wanted!" Yeah, it's like that! If you are an Agile practitioner, and I favor Scrum, it does all the things that are most important to you and it does it with style. Yes, Jira can do the job, but it's not as fun, and its missing some very clever features Clarizen Go knocks out of the park. I love it.
To give you a little background, I am a Scrum practitioner, and I follow the Scrum practices pretty closely. For the last year, I have been bringing a development team into the Agile world, and we have been using a whiteboard (Scrumboard) and stickies. Yes, the team reaped the rewards of Scrum; they were more successful, produced better products, and had happier customers.
A week (no kidding) before the latest version of Clarizen Go was unveiled to me, I held a SWOT analysis (attended by the CIO, Sr. Managers, and the developers) to determine how our process was working.
SWOT OF OUR PRIOR STICKY NOTE SCRUM SOLUTION
The strengths were what you would imagine (this is just a sub-set):
o Organized Process
o Improved communication
o Greater flexibility
o We come together and work out misunderstandings
o Appreciation for what each group does
o Daily stand-ups are very helpful
Weaknesses (again, a subset):
o Post-It Notes are not enough to fully document requirements
o We are not really capturing acceptance criteria
o Scrumboard meetings are disruptive to other staff
Following the meeting, I started building out in Jira, recognizing that an e-tool could address the three biggest weaknesses identified. Then Clarizen calls me, and tells me that the one showstopper I had for their GO product (no story points) was resolved and now story points are supported. I got the demo and saw that Go could meet the three main weaknesses we identified and it was fun to use.
So now, we can:
- Capture detailed requirements and acceptance criteria for every user story.
- Replicate the simple look/feel and drag & drop of a sticky note board (so everyone gets it).
- Run the whole thing in a conference room with a screen without disturbing others. (Actually, I rolled in a mobile screen into my office and we gather there with the door shut.)
I also like that during the Scrum I can capture updates in the discussion board for each story and the time spent by team members the day prior. I am a fan.
What do you dislike?
This is a new product. It functions much better than most products that just hit the marketplace. Because it is new, there are still a few issues. For me the biggest one is that Burn-Up / Burn-Down and Velocity are all calculated by # of TASKS and not by Story Points. (I understand they are working on that.) Reporting is light, and though it is CRITICAL that they DO NOT over-engineer this product, there should be some reports that allow for reporting across multiple workspaces (projects). Also, we need the capability to group projects by portfolio or program.
However, Clarizen MUST make sure that they DO NOT incorporate every feature they dream up or is requested. The beauty of this solution is its simplicity and deviation from this risks straying from the core concepts of the Agile Manifesto. It is critical that this product not be over-engineered.
Recommendations to others considering the product:
Honestly, I would ask for a trial. See if you like it. See if you think the features are there that you need. Expect a product that provides the features to be extremely valuable, but without being over-engineered.
What problems are you solving with the product? What benefits have you realized?
Also, I have one last note for Clarizen Go Scrum Masters (customers). You will have to be savvy when running your standups. There will be a temptation to go deep into each user story because Clarizen Go makes it so easy. You will find that you can easily blow past the 15 minute mark for the daily scrum. One way I slow it down (bad thing), is that I find it useful to get your dev team to report time worked on the user story each scrum and easily record it then and there (good thing). I won't give that up, so it's a balance.
