Over the past few weeks I’ve been testing out Airgile to help me plan, track and manage my current Flex development effort. Before I continue please keep in mind this review is coming from someone who hates, no LOATHES project tracking tools/systems. I’ve used quite a few of them and most are a total waste of time, difficult to use and overall completely useless. They deliver absolutely no real value to developers or the project (maybe they help PMs sleep at night at best). Anyway, back to the point, just want to make sure you clearly understand where this review/recommendation is coming from…

My main project tracking system is usually Notepad. I want something super-lightweight, extremely easy to use and fast/responsive. If I have to click around a lot, or it takes fifteen minutes to enter a project, task or defect forget about it. I’ll happily go back to Notepad (now TextMate since I switched to Mac btw). If it’s a web based tool and creeps due to server load, poorly written backend/frontend code… Again, you can forget it. I’m out, back to TextMate. I could ramble on and on but perhaps that’s suited for another post about the myth of project management tools/systems.

Enter Airgile. Yay! Bonus, it’s a Flex app! Yay Yay! What’s that you say? Yes, an easy to use, meaningful, responsive, lightweight tool that can be used to successfully manage and track projects, tasks and defects. Ready for bonus number two? They have a very easy to follow instructions for installing an Eclipse (Flash Builder) plugin that allows developers to manage their assigned tasks inside the IDE. Whaa..?? Yep. From the perspective of a developer this is fantastic. I don’t have to fumble around with some clunky ass, pathetic excuse of a web application to update the tasks I’ve been assigned. This keeps the dev happy and the PM happy. Interested yet? You should be.

Another absolutely fantastic thing about Airgile is the way the Flex app is designed. You can navigate through the project very quickly. You can enter new tasks/defects in under a minute. You can update tasks in the same. Adding new projects takes about one minute too. The charts and metrics are really great for project managers, clients and the developers. The Activity Log is sweet too,  you can check it to get an idea of who’s working on what and when. I actually just use the Flex app vs. the Eclipse plugin. The Airgile UI is better and the web app is zippy with no fuss and it works, it just works. Awesome. One last thing is the cost. It’s very affordable.

So, I recommend that you at least check out Airgile. It’s not some huge management tool so there could be some features that aren’t available for larger corporations and teams. Airgile is however a great tool to help organize, realize, manage and track projects, tasks and defects. It has great reporting. It’s really easy to use, affordable and blazing fast! Shouts to the Airgile team for a killer app!