Code2Plan, a Free Visual Studio Agile Project Management Add-in

Jesse Johnston and Denis Morozov created code2plan, an Agile software project management tool, as a beta Visual Studio add-in and released it for free. The tool also runs as a stand-alone application that can be used to track projects, iterations, user stories, features, tests, defects and builds.

Agile software project management is becoming increasingly popular, so another Agile tool is not a surprise. The attractive part of this tool is its integration with Visual Studio 2008, but it can also run as a stand-alone application. .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 is required and it is automatically installed during setup if missing.

code2plan currently tracks the following features: projects, iterations, user stories, features, tests, defects and builds. The tool also manages traditional projects by tracking phases instead of iterations and requirements instead of stories. code2plan creates burndown charts for both types of projects.

code2plan can use its own database or can connect to a team database, SQL 2005 and 2008 being supported. Using a team database allows for projects to be shared across team members which can edit the projects. Every team member can update the current view to include the changes done by other team members. Project changes can be edited offline and they will be automatically synchronized with the team upon connection. There is no limit on how many members a team could have.

code2plan is free and no registration or license is required. The two developers team plan to release a richer application in the future which will most probably be not free, but they promise to keep the basic edition free. The project is not open sourced and there are no plans to make it so. An SDK is to be released soon allowing other developers to enhance the tool by using its API.