Jade Robbins

New Project Launched: AgileTask!

Today I am proud to announce that Robert Lund, Mark Sanborn, and myself have launched a new web project: AgileTask.

What is AgileTask?

AgileTask is a to-do list application that follows many agile project management philosophies. We focus primarily on having a backlog (Icebox) of all tasks you need to accomplish and selectively moving those backlog tasks up to your current iteration of work (Today). We also focused on making it easy to add tasks, allowing software integrations (through a RESTful API), and creating an achievement system to encourage you to use AgileTask as much as possible.

The AgileTask Story

One day at work, my coworker Pol Llovet mentioned that he wished there was a task tracking application that followed an agile approach. He thought that being able to organize his to-do list into things he needs to work on today and a backlog of items that he needed to work on would be flexible, agile, and more productive. I agreed and soon approached my friend Rob and Mark about trying to build an application that did just that.

Why another To-Do App?

Because no other did exactly what we wanted! While there were some desktop apps that came close, but we had a feeling that agile principals were important enough to warrant their own application.

What’s Next?

Bug Squashing – We’ve already received a couple bug reports, so we will be constantly squashing the ones that are found!

User Interface Polish – We plan to clean up the user interface and add a little more polish

More Achievements – These keep the application productive and fun, so we will be adding more constantly (the only way to find them is to use the app!)

Thanks

Big thanks to Rob and Mark for being an awesome team with me on this project. Also thanks to my wife, family, and friends for being supportive and tolerant of my lack of free time. And finally, thank you to everyone that has let me talk about the app, used the app, tested the app, given me advice, and gave me encouragement. You all kick ass, thank you.

Tags: agile, agiletask, api, Mark, restful, rob
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Use Outside Information Carefully

Often on the Faceoff podcast, Mark Sanborn and I talk about how much we love APIs and accessibility to 3rd party tools. While I still agree with that opinion, always make sure that your third party content isn’t bogging down your site. I just went to site who had SO MANY social “add this to XXXXX” buttons that it took a good 30 seconds to load!

There are quite a few ways to prevent this. For example, if you are noticing a slow down because of social “add to” buttons or subscription chicklets, make your own image for them! This will also ensure that your buttons match your sites design and won’t create site loading slow downs. If you are using another site’s API and think that it might be the culprit, do things like cache the API information and update the chache periodically.

Remember, using an API or other people’s storage is great, but don’t do it at the cost of a snappy page load.

Tags: api, chicklets, faceoff, load time
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