CardBoard

Avantages

The simplicity of the tool, it provided me with what I wanted and did not over complicate it with features I did not need.

Inconvénients

The export to excel option was pretty messy, but then again why export it?

What I wanted was a way to capture the full board visually to put into a document or communication, to show the overall Story Map (which I could not get in screen shots) I realize I could provide a link to the board for people to access and see the actual Map, but sometimes you just want a picture of it to support a communication.

Avantages

The application is intuitive and it's very easy to demonstrate the importance of technical debt to stakeholders.

Inconvénients

The export capability is limited. The description of the cards can not be exported without printing each card individually. The board view PDF export is not as user friendly/aesthetically pleasing as the actual application. Stakeholders are asking for PDF exports, however, I hesitate to share due to the aforementioned reasons.

Avantages

I liked that it was very easy to use. Almost everything was very click and drag, which made it really easy to onboard new users who were new to story mapping.

I also really appreciated that it let me share a story map across multiple locations. I work with teams in SF and Seattle. A physical board is a nice idea but just not possible with the way that we are distributed.

Inconvénients

I had some challenges with user management. I work in a large enterprise so adding users individually was a bit of a pain and it was challenge to move users from regular viewer to user or admin roles on multiple boards.

I also found that bulk moves of cards was difficult. If I wanted to pick up several cards and put them between two existing rows that wasn't really possible without spending 8 or 10 minutes rearranging the other cards around it to keep the map coherent.

Also our org runs on-prem JIRA and I had no way to connect JIRA and confluence together, which made it nearly impossible to keep the two in sync. This is ultimately why I stopped using the product.

Avantages

I quite liked the intuitive interface and ease of storyboarding things.

Inconvénients

The JIRA integration left something to be desired. The software did not do a good job of informing me of what it would do when I synced the two. It was also not clear to me that this was not a constant sync. Changes in one product were not automatically migrated over to the other. This was especially problematic because later syncs of the stories and epics caused duplicates of the previously synchronized items to appear because the system did not identify previously sync'd stories.

Avantages

While working with paper and stickies is the most quick tool to adopt, sometimes a digital one is required, as it provides certain benefits (quick editing; sharing; remote collaboration).

I liked that it required zero learning for the basics. I just did the storymaps without a hitch, no wondering how I can do this or that. Of course, it provides some advanced functionality, but for the pure, basic, stickies-on-the-wall, experience, you there isn't a learning curve. Just plug and do.

Inconvénients

The free version is said to work like the GitHub model - all boards are public. Everyone can see them and browse them. So far so good. However, unlike GitHub where you can use one of several ways to get your repository to other people (sharing a link, inviting them, telling them the name of the repo...) I didn't find any of it here. I could not share the free board to my colleagues (even for viewing). There is a workaround with exporting, which can get the job done.

I understand this is their business model, but then the site should not describe it working as GitHub's public repos, as it, in practice, differs as an end result.

Avantages

The simplicity of the boards are fantastic and have caused several others in my company to adopt the product as well. It is great for visualizing plans to stakeholders, and for them to see the breakdown of the features and when development will happen

Inconvénients

The JIRA integration needs work. We use JIRA extensively, with multiple boards for various work streams. The integrator on the Cardboard side does not allow for customization over what is being pulled, and therefore cannot filter out technical tasks when I only want the user stories coming through. This needs to be fixed for it to get 5 stars.

Avantages

It's open ended with what I can do. I like being able to move the cards anywhere I want, the user journey functionality is a great idea, and it creates a good visual.

Inconvénients

The number one issue is the navigation and use of the software. Moving cards around quickly and moving around the board (especially when sharing my screen) needs a lot of work. If it the use of this software improved, it would be my main story board. I still use a physical board for working sessions because of this.

Avantages

- Allows you to keep your story map and edit it ongoing, unlike having it on the wall where it often has to come down and all you have left is a photo
- Great for distributed teams

Inconvénients

- The lmitations are only those of doing anything on a screen, you can't step back and see the bigger picture

Avantages

The learning curve was short, so picking up CardBoard and using it was fast. Creating cards and laying them out was easy.

Inconvénients

The cards, as displayed, were much too small. In order to even include all of the information that a User Story requires for one side of the card much of the text was hidden. The back was always hidden. The grid layout was much too rigid, I had hoped for the ability to overlap cards. If these features were present they were not obvious.

Laying out cards initially was easy, but the UI resisted efforts to move cards very far (especially using a touch interface). If I needed to move a card to a different part of the board it was almost easier to delete and recreate it than move it.

Avantages

Easy to create cards, add details
There are few user story map tools out there, this is one of the better ones

Inconvénients

Jira integration is awful, mostly didn't work, and can only have two colors of cards.

Avantages

* Very easy to start using it. After you get yourself familiar with the Story Map Concept and sign up for CardBoard, you can start doing the mapping exercise in no-time.
* Simple, yet powerful interface. There aren't too many features in the interface (and I'm not saying they are needed), and that makes the UI nice and clean. You won't get lost in tons of unnecessary or rarely used features, everything is at hand and useful.

Inconvénients

The app itself is great, the following points are not criticism, rather ways of further improvement:
* Story mapping is not a wide know concept, so some tutorial(s) about story mapping would be great. For example, the competitors storiesonboard offers a "User Story Mapping for beginners" guide. Something like this would be helpful for CardBoard users as well.
* UI could benefit from some additions, e.g. to allow to increase the card titles font.

Avantages

It's simple and fast. Very easy to create story maps, journeys, and it's easy to slice the map into different chunks.

Inconvénients

I suppose if I had to nitpick, a 'collapse' option for 'epics' would be handy, especially when you get into huge storymaps...although that would take away the free-flowing nature of the interface.

Avantages

Cardboard is easy and simple to use. Doesn't take much to get up and running. Nice for sharing story maps with remote users. Great for small story maps.

Inconvénients

A little too simple. It becomes hard to manage with bigger maps.

Avantages

- The idea
- The fact that their is not real alternative to the product (not saying it's a good product, just not worst than competition)
- Easy to use and simple
- The journey feature

Inconvénients

- Buggy
- The pricing model
- Missing at least a crucial features: descent printing (what do you think teams do with a Story Map)
- When you move things cards do not reorganized as expected and we end to have to move many cards across the screen. I should not be forced to think in advance what to enter first to avoid delating and moving things around after.

Avantages

I learned about CardBoard from book, User Story Mapping. I so wanted this to be more, but it's a basic implementation of story boarding. It did have TFS integration, which I wanted. I also loved the whole premise of a virtual board for doing story mapping with a remote team.

Inconvénients

I found it to be too basic and not very imaginative in its implementation. Given that we'd want to use it with multiple stories and have one place, I felt it didn't give us the tools to do that.

Avantages

CardboardIT is extremely easy to set up and get going with. I had my first board running and doing real work with in minutes. There were many examples of other boards to get ideas from but this is so easy to use you really don't need much.
I also loved the free trial. It is fully functional but requires that your board remain publicly visible. That was perfect for the 1 week hackathon project we used it for. If I were to continue then I would definitely pay the small fee to keep the board going.

Inconvénients

There's not much not to like. It's straight forward and easy so I never had to call tech support or even consult the help file.
I suppose an integration with other tools like Jira might require a bit more thought but there's no need if you're using it as a stand alone product.

Avantages

I love the ease of adding cards up on the board and the software. Helps with project management.

Inconvénients

Learning curve. Should be easier to learn

Avantages

The simplicity: dragging and dropping cards. It's like 'digital post-it notes'.

Inconvénients

When I want to add more details (on the back of the cards), there's no formatting options. Also, if I want to add a column or row in the middle, I need to shift out every individual card.

Avantages

simple, straight-forward interface. ability to export and/or link to other common apps.

Inconvénients

nothing specific. opens additional browser windows when downloading.

Avantages

I liked that there was a free trial for the product. When it comes to project planning, mapping, solutions, and tracking, it's hard to find a program with ALL the bells and whistles so the free trial is helpful. The product can be deployed on mac, windows, apple, and android which is important due to employees having different devices.

Inconvénients

It didn't include a lot of the features that we needed when it comes to project solutions. Also need to make sure you have enough licensing.

Avantages

The best thing about Cardboard is that it offers other modes of use, e.g. integrating to JIRA or printing cards for real world manipulation.

Inconvénients

Sharing (allowing Viewers) for a large community is constrained by either configuration (public vs private) or administration (long list of emails.)

Avantages

Easy to use right off the bat. Very short learning curve

Inconvénients

Not specific to Cardboard, but for all tools: start your idea OUTSIDE the tool first. Doodle it on a napkin if you want to! It will mean you spend less time with false starts in the tool and more time working through what the tool can do.

Avantages

Simple and intuitive - there was close to no learning curve and there were no excess features that made it confusing to use, just the basic necessities.

Inconvénients

Basic is best, but it could be a little more aesthetically appealling - it looks a bit like outdated Windows software, but not in a cool retro way.

Avantages

The software allows you to move complex user stories into digital cards and move away for 3M sticky notes. This is a great benefit for remote teams.

Inconvénients

Lack of support for drill down cards. Add support for personas for each card would be nice.

Avantages

Clean design, easy to use. There is an integration with Jira, but I didnt used yet.

Inconvénients

It would be good to have a comment session that we can see in the map overview.