The main goal of iteration 48 was to build on the (recently added) tagging features. Planner has also become significantly easier to use for teams that are adopting Kanban's "continuous flow" approach (rather than using sprints or iterations).

There was one new feature (HTML tables in Markdown) and plenty of bug fixing this iteration.

One of the benefits of working with a physical card wall is that you know that your wall is an authorative version of your plan, and an accurate reflection of the team's progress. This isn't necessarily the case if your card wall is on a web page, and the focus of this iteration was to fix it.

The main focus this iteration was on tagging and grouping of cards. We've also done some more work on search, and improved the way that discussions are displayed on the card page.

There were two areas of focus for this iteration. I've had lots of great feedback from customers recently which have lead to some good improvements to the UI. One customer also needed to be able to share their projects with the public, so (while it wasn't a feature I was expecting to be adding to Planner just yet) I'm delighted that we now support public boards!

This iteration has seen a couple of important features ship; coloured stickers and search.

This iteration was focussed on importing/exporting cards via CSV files. Being able to get your data out in an easily accessible form is vital for a tool like Planner.

Some of the bigger pieces of development work that I'm looking to do on Planner over the coming months will include tools for managing project backlogs. Those features will be made significantly easier to build with the help of a client side MVC framework.

So while there haven't been any new features for me to show you from this iteration, interesting things have been happening under the hood (most notably, with Backbone.js).

There were two nice cosmetic improvements this iteration. I also made a small change to the way I work, which has made work more enjoyable and might even speed up future development.

The exciting new stuff this fortnight comes in the form of a couple of charts that help you track your project's progress. I also finished off the messaging system that I've been working on for the previous two iterations.

Last iteration I started building a messaging system that's designed for agile teams, and wrote about some of the advantages of this approach over commenting on story cards. This iteration saw further improvements to the messaging system, bringing discussions into your email inbox, with the option to attach files to your messages.

I started tackling a large feature this iteration; a messaging system. I'm a big fan of the traditional approach to agile communication: it's best done face to face. Sending emails is a poor substitute for getting up from your desk, walking across the room, and having a chat with a colleague. But time working practices have changed and we don't all have the luxury of working in the same room.

This was a shorter iteration than usual (due to New Year getting in the way) but an important feature was shipped. You can now upload images, documents, videos, etc. to story cards. The files are stored on (and securely served from) Amazon's S3 storage service. Thumbnail images of your uploaded files are generated when you upload a file, making it easy to find what you're looking for at a glance.

This iteration finished on Christmas Eve, and I'd set myself the unrealistic goal of working productively right up until the end of the 24th during a week of Christmas parties. As you might expect, I failed dismally. I did get three new features released though, and while I didn't complete it, I laid the groundwork for uploading attachments to story cards.

This is the first in a series of [fortnightly retrospectives] that I'll be writing about building Agile Planner. Each post will compare what I hoped to achieve at the start of an iteration with where I actually managed to get to two weeks later.

I'll also give a brief write up of any new features I've implemented each fortnight, and share any useful lessons that I've learned along the way.

For the last six months I've been wanting to write up some of the experiences I've had while bootstrapping Agile Planner. I've also been dying to tell everybody about what I've been adding to the product itself (the screenshots in the tour are long overdue an update).

Unfortunately I've always struggled to find the time to fit serious writing in alongside product development, so I'm taking a new tack. Every fortnight I'll be writing about new features in Agile Planner, how well my iteration has gone, and what I've learnt about productivity as a bootstrapper.