August 5, 2011 | John Rusk | 5 Comments My new Agile scope management tool is now live! It’s called Tactyle, in reference to its emphasis on touching and interacting with the content of your project. Other key design principles include: simple, effective, and fully-automated Earned Value – in keeping with my blog posts in recent years suitable for fixed price and/or fixed scope – again, in keeping with this blog based in the Story Mapping paradigm (it’s not a database, it’s not a kanban board; it’s just totally a Story Map) designed to have the direct “tangible-ness” of index cards (more so than any other tool I’ve seen – IMHO) while also being authentically digital low-friction (i.e. quick and easy to use) deliberate simplicity (to the point that there are only two screens in the whole product) You can find videos, documentation, and the product itself at www.tactyle.net. I’ve been using it myself for about 4 months (to manage it’s own development). I hope you find it as useful, and addictive, as I have.
Have you thought about having a free version. E.g. for something like up to two projects, up to three users? It would make it easier to give tool a real try and would also provide a bit of publicity from the folks who wouldn’t buy for money anyway.
Hi Artem, Thanks for your comment. The current beta is free, and expires at the end of _next_ year (2012). So you can use it free for over a year if you download today. When (or if) I start charging for it, my planned price is $1 per week, which I think is very reasonable. I don’t think I would also offer a free version, for two reasons: (a) projects with 3 or fewer users are one of the main markets for Tactyle, since it suits those projects much better than many competing projects IMHO and (b) surely, if a project is worth doing in the first place, then it’s also worth $1 per week to manage it well.
P.S. You asked for nagging you if MacOS X version would be needed. Yeah, I won’t be able to try your tool on my Mac otherwise 🙂
🙂 Thanks for the comment re MacOS. I’ve had several similar comments via email too. I’ve had some ideas about how to do it, but need to consider when I can find the time, and also to get a better understanding of the overall level of interest in the tool.