Mingle has received a fair bit of attention lately and the latest version, 2.1, has just been released.

I’m quite happy with Rallydev but as Mingle is made by Thoughtworks themselves and the guys at Silverstripe keep raving about it I thought I’d better check it out. Also, as much as I like Rallydev and VersionOne - they’re both a bit weak on the usability side.

Below a list of what I like and dislike about Mingle:

Things I like:
1. Installation & Support

• Free web/phone conference with a Mingle representative to guide you through configuring the system after you have received a free hosted trial. Very helpful!
• A breeze to install the downloadable version
• Runs on all operating systems (incl. Max OSX, Linux and Open Solaris) and most database systems incl. Postgres

• It just looks nice and appealing
• Tasks can be completed with relatively few mouse clicks

• If you choose the scrum template the card hierarchy of sprints - stories - tasks is very intuitive and standard scrum
• You can create epics for your product backlog

• Given you’re willing to spend enough time playing with configuration settings and are inclined to learn Mingle’s proprietary SQL-like language you can configure the tool to fit exactly your needs. Hell, you could probably even extend their JRuby ;-)

• Mingle contains a fully fledged wiki - great for sharing project information!
• All reports are configurable on the wiki

• As expected, very easily done from Excel (For switchers it’d be great to have an automated import/export to/from Rallydev and VersionOne)
• Great that it lets you preview your import before starting the actual import.

• Representing everything as cards is confusing: It does make sense for user stories, which in the physical world are written on story cards but using cards for releases, sprints and tasks seems forced and non-intuitive
• I don’t want to fit my mental models around a tool - it should be the other way around! Scrum concepts such as sprints and releases are a bad fit for Mingle’s generic object model of cards

• I miss the nice overview I have in Rallydev where I can see all my release and sprint dates
• Card trees fill quite a big part of the screen and it’s hard to get an overview at a glance (There’s another, smaller view but it doesn’t show the relations very well)
• Sprints and releases don’t have fields for start and end dates (I can add them myself by configuring cards but not adding them by default seems odd)

• There seems to be no standard way of getting started with a project quickly. There is no step by step process to quickly set up your releases, sprints, product backlog and user stories. Unlike Rallydev which guides you through with a pre-defined process and video documentation Mingle makes you figure it out for yourself.
• Mingle expects you to invest a considerable amount of time learning how to configure the system and how to make it work for you.

• There is no free SAAS version available (By comparison Rally Community edition is free for up to 10 users and Version One’s team edition provides similar functionality for free)
• Hosting Mingle on your own server is free for up to 5 users but I don’t want to wast my time installing tools and maintaining a server.
• The hosted trial for one project is great but only being allowed to keep the instance for 2-3 week is not enough for me to try Mingle on a real project and to make a decision to move all my projects from Rally or VersionOne

Tags: tools, mingle, rallydev, review, agile