I recently came across two tools that despite being designed for Agile Development, can be used to manage Agile Marketing projects. Both tools have a steeper learning curve than a Kanban tool like Trello, but with that learning comes greater power and flexibility.
OnTime Scrum
OnTime Scrum is a project management and bug tracking tool for Scrum teams from AxoSoft. It is part of a suite of products that include OnTime HelpDesk and OnTime Wiki. It is built on HTML 5, which in practice means that it is a SAAS product that is as responsive and interactive as any desktop product. I particularly like how OnTime Scrum allows you to quickly enter a series of stories to create your backlog, sort them in the planning board, and then drag selected stories into the approved column for your current sprint. If you provide estimates for each story, it will generate automatic burndown charts. OnTime Scrum also allows you to create a custom dashboard, which in addition to displaying the previously mentioned burndown charts, allows you to see at a glance current team velocity, required velocity to complete everything by the end of the Sprint, projected completion date and work remaining.
Pricing starts at $10 per month for small teams (up to 10 users), $7 per user per month after that, and they provide a free 30-day trial (requires a credit card).
Mingle
Mingle’s greatest strength is its support of templates. Templates allow you to adapt Mingle to work the way you do. Mingle comes with templates for Scrum, Agile Hybrid, Agile Hybrid with Tasks, Lean Programming and XP (Extreme Programming). I’m sure it’s possible to create a template for Agile Marketing, although I couldn’t figure out how to modify the pages enough to accomplish this. Like OnTime Scrum, Mingle allows you to create a backlog and drag individual items into the current iteration. It doesn’t allow you to sort the stories simply by dragging and dropping, and overall, I found it slightly less intuitive to use. It also allows you to create an Overview page, equivalent to OnTime Scrum’s custom dashboard, where it can display velocity, burn down and burn up charts, release metrics, and projected completion date.
Pricing is free for the first 5 users, and $400 per user per year after that.
What other tools have people used to manage Agile Marketing? I’d love to hear about your experiences.
