Kanban Tool vs. SpiraPlan

Kanban is well suited for a fast-paced working environment for larger teams who want continuous communication with users. Kanban is good for rapid development and daily meetings for updates and statuses. Kanban is less suited for smaller teams or groups who don't require collaboration and constant communication with involved users. Kanban is time-consuming and it takes additional effort outside of your regular work to maintain and manage the tool.

Incentivized

We selected SpiraPlan because the workflow allows us to start simple without adopting an entire methodology. It suits small teams and single users really well.

• It provides a good basic overview of where tasks are on a timeline (particularly helpful for a pull-based approach).
• It provides a good collaborative space to have multiple folks commenting on multiple tasks.
• It does a good job of managing very basic visual elements of an agile development cycle.

Incentivized

• Flexible requirements organisation structure. I'm able to group and sub-group requirements as I see fit.
• Competitive product pricing. Paying by active use instead of registered user was the winning point.
• UI is straightforward and easy to use.

• Kanban does not show the task or story clearly. You have to open the project separately to view the details of the project.
• Kanban gives a higher level project management view but it lacks customization and personal settings features.
• I would like to see Kanban provide mobile access to their tool, data, and board. This would be very useful for all companies and provide an increase in efficiency and productivity.

Incentivized

• Access from South East Asia is rather sluggish. Could be due to server location.
• Complimentary phone app to do simple tasks (e.g. create tasks, create requirements, add comments) offline would be beneficial because access to the internet can be an issue at the customer's environment.

We are more likely than not to renew our use of Kanban. Even with its limits, it still is a good product that fulfills our needs.

Incentivized

Again, this is a strong tool for software teams using Agile that are distributed across multiple geographies. It can be good for co-located teams too, but there are better platforms on the market like JIRA that provide a more built-out story.

Incentivized

This is the best tool I had a chance to work with- since I started to use it I saved a lot of time and I made my work go smoothly.

We've only tried JIRA Agile and KanbanFlow before. Kanban Tool was the one that our team actually liked and enjoyed working with. Also - it's been much easier to get started with and to understand than some of the other two (JIRA in particular). Although JIRA has many more features that we would have possibly used, the user feedback on it was so poor we were afraid that the negativity would create time wasted and less "job satisfaction" amongst the team.

Main differentiating factors: 1. Lightweight process 2. Plans based on active users instead of registered users.

• Better communication and organization of ongoing projects.
• We are a very small team, with many areas to work on. Having everything in one system gives us a lot of visibility.
• Greatly reduced costs from using other tools that were much more expensive.

• Allows us to manage simple IT requirements without major upfront costs. Allows us to expand our process complexity at our own pace.
• Slow UI response from a South East Asia country can make data entry a drag.