Webfusion

As agile software development has gained prominence in recent years, a number of apps have emerged to organize the process. Webfusion (WF) recently spoke with Manuel Morales (MM), the creator of Team Trick which is a Ruby-based scrum platform where development teams can chart their progress:

WF: Agile development has taken off in recent years – what do you see the main advantages over traditional processes? How has your own development experience influenced the project?

MM: Software development is such a complicated an unpredictable thing that an agile approach fits way better than waterfall. Agile lets bright teams shine. The way agile responds to change seriously boost productivity, makes the client more satisfied with the final results and reduces failure odds. What else can you ask for?

WF: How can Team Trick help teams working to improve code and reduce project times? Your app has integrated graphical dashboards – how can project managers use this to evaluate the progress toward their next release?
MM: TeamTrick saves time automating the most tedious tasks of Scrum like burndown chart and sprint planning estimations.In addition to that, the project dashboard demonstrates in a blink how well is your team doing in terms of productivity and estimations.
Scrum is usually implemented with post-its on a board. This works great for in-place teams but becomes a problem as soon as project members start working outside of the office. You can work around this with tools like Google docs. But TeamTrick provides additional features like the mentioned above.

WF: You built the application on Rails – how do you see the advantages of Ruby versus PHP?

MM: TeamTrick wouldn’t have been possible without a good framework behind. Learning Rails in developing TeamTrick has been a really enjoyable experience. Mostly due all the good practices and concepts I learned with it. Like Don’t Repeat Yourself, Test Driven Development, the MVC pattern, etc. About the Ruby vs. PHP vs. Java question: Ruby is really pleasant for the programmer. But that’s not the most important thing. I value much more a good framework and an excellent community.

WF: Where do you see the feature of web apps headed in the next few years?

MM: Companies are going crazy about location based apps. And it seems obvious that we are going to see revolutionary apps in this field. Augmented reality is impressive. However, it’s easy to be confused and start thinking that people will use your app just for being location based. What I’m sure is that mobile phone compatibility will become essential.