Card Conversation Confirmation, known as the 3Cs and introduced by Ron Jeffries is a method of defining and managing user stories for software development in a consistent manner. This website offers a tool to facilitate this; I've been using this in the teams I work with for some time and it is very effective. Before creating this tool I've always used Microsoft Excel files to organise the data necessary for this approach but that's fraught with version control and access challenges. I tried using issue or task trackers but these were too generic.

3Cs is about defining some software's requirements in the form of user stories; the card contains the user story. The conversation is what takes place after the story has been written down; people ask questions to gain a clearer understanding of the user story. The conversation can take place any time from the writing of the card to siging it off an deploying it; during estimating, during development and during testing. For example, in order to estimate a user story developers may have different understanding of what's required and need to have a conversation to agree on the estimate. The confirmation is the satisfaction criteria; the tests that must pass in order to validate that the user story has been delivered.

I've decided to launch this software so that I can make use of it in my work and you can use it too. The important concept to keep in mind is the one I maintained while building this - that is one of the statements in the Agile Manifesto which reads "Individuals and interactions over processes and tools". So this tool is deliberately kept a simple as possible - there is no configuration required - no need to initiate projects - no unnecessary relationships between data - no workflow. Now I'm not saying these things are bad - just that I don't want to build something that contradicts the principles of agility. I have lots of ideas about what else it could do - such as sprint scheduling and burn down charting but I have a lot of patience and I think this tool has great benefits just the way it is.

Ok - sorry - apologies for producing the most convoluted domain name in web history - but 3Cs.com was already taken and I have no intention of giving them a link.

You and your software development team can benefit from this free online agile tool and use Card Conversation Confirmation FREE for up to 5 users.

To register for a FREE 5 user licence please click here. All you need enter is your username, password, company name and email address.

The demo contains some of the stories that created this software.

To access the demo visit the login page and enter
Username = demo and Password = demo1

I have a roadmap of improvements in mind already. The first is to extend functions to include sprint planning and burn down charts followed by a simple resource management tool.

If you haven't used PlanningPoker.com take a look. The structure of the user stories in this software is made to match that used in PlanningPoker.com. PlanningPoker.com allows you to import user stories and download CSV of your estimates later versions of this software may also allow imports and downloads so that the two applications can work together. Also see my blogs on planning poker.