Planix

We are proud to announce that we have been selected as on of the finalists for the Greater Richmond Technology Council’s innovation award. The award is given to the company whose new technology or use of technology holds significant promise. Sponsored by Qimonda, the award will be given to one of 5 finalists which also include Agility Healthcare Solutions, LogicDepot, Mediaflux, and OTAir.

Yesterday, Chris Kanaracus at Redmond Developer News” honored us with coverage in the April Issue. If interested, you can read the full article here.

Early this morning we began offering paid plans for Planix. We hope our users will find value through this introductory pricing. The information is available here. We look forward to your continued feedback and are busily engaged in developing upcoming features.

We will be upgrading our servers tonight to support SSL in preparation for our eventual 1.0 release. We plan on doing this at 11pm EST, tonight.

Our apologies in advance for any inconvenience; we are close to offering Planix for subscription!

After more than 4 months in Private Beta, we’ve decided that its time to open up the application for broader usage. We hope to obtain additional feedback in order to continue to refine functionality and usability . In the spirit of continual improvement and refinement, we look forward to your comments and to releasing the application in earnest in the coming few weeks. The team has worked diligently to arrive at this milestone and are excited about the emerging set of features we’re exploring. Thank you all again for your continued support, and please honor us with your continued constructive input.

Recently, we’ve been fortunate enough to receive additional coverage from a couple of sources, lately. Chris Kanaracus at Redmond Developer News covered Planix in a blog post on February 28th. Today, Brian Benziner at Solution Watch also posted a review of a handful of Project Management software applications in addition to Planix including: Basecamp, Plan HQ, Competitous, Unfuddle, and Gilffy. We look forward to reviewing these services ourselves in the coming weeks.

Our Private Beta continues to progress well; we thank everyone for your positive as well as constructive feedback. We’re excited about the new features and functionality that you’ve inspired and that we have been exploring. Also, we were fortunate to have received some favorable coverage this week. Pete Cashmore of Mashable was kind enough to Review the application. As a result, a fair number of people have requested access to the Private Beta. We’re currently handling those requests on a case-by-case basis. Thanks for all of your continuing support, and look for more, soon!

Since our initial beta launch we’ve received a range of input regarding the application. One of the first things you’ll notice is that we’ve changed the name of the product based on your feedback. We’ve reverted back to the original name of the application, Planix as a result of your suggestion that using the previous name was confusing. We’ve also responded to other suggestions and have put together other features which were already on the product plan. In summary, the changes include:

• New estimate amendment feature – allowing developers to comment on and suggest new estimates
  • For now, you can request special user access to enable developers to access this functionality
  • In the future, you will be able to manage users within your team by yourself
• New business priority worksheet – allowing stakeholders to prioritize the use-cases
• User Interface speed enhancements
• The expand/collapse state of the various User Interface sections is now “remembered” as you navigate through the application
• Technical and Environmental factors options are now more descriptive and configurable

In the New Year, we’ll be launching the application to the general public. In the meantime, we continue to take suggestions from our users and to plan the product’s evolution. So, don’t be shy, and please provide your on-going support and suggestions.

We thank you very much for your support since the initial beta launch, it is very much appreciated. We all wish you a very happy holiday season and a very happy New Year!

At last, Planix launches after weeks in alpha release, months in development, and years in the making. The questions it tries to address are two we’ve seen in all shapes and sizes of organizations and projects: “When will it be done?” and “Are we on track?” The ‘it’ here is a custom software application. Software estimation is part art and part science. While we don’t claim to have cracked the secret code to software estimation with Planix, we do hope we’re well on our way to ‘democratizing’ the seemingly arcane process for everyone.

Planix leverages the best practices and concepts provided by estimation frameworks such as COCOMO (COnstructive COst MOdel), Function Point Analysis, and Use Case Points while sprinkling in a handful of our own successful techniques for estimating, planning, and negotiating the development of software. While these best practices are incredibly powerful, historically, they’ve been hard to implement in a repeatable way because of their complexity. Our goal with Planix is to empower teams by finding ways to make estimation and project management understandable without requiring them to have a PhD in software estimation or Microsoft Project.

With the release of this Private Beta version we hope to get crucial feedback to refine the application before our public release. We recognize this is a living application that will continue to evolve, and we have a queue of both refinements and new features which we are already actively managing. We thank you for taking us up on our invitation, and look forward to your input.

Please email any input you do have to feedback [at] planixonline.com

Happy estimating.