About the project
RSSQ (really simple story queue, pronounced "risk") is a companion tool for programmers working in an agile environment. Using this software, a programmer can maintain a list of prioritized stories and organize them into iterations. A velocity can be measured for completed stories, allowing a programmer to track their rate of completion. Since this application is designed as a personal companion tool, it may lack features suitable for a larger team.
The original 'itch' for this application was as a replacement for various note-taking applications. These had been used by members of the team to track the outstanding work items for a number of different projects, but we soon found that we needed something different. While most had note-taking features (wiki-like markup, organization) that we needed, they did not have any time or task tracking features that would be required for a tool in an agile environment.
RSSQ is also being used as a common working context for some programmers who have formed a coding dojo (initial announcement). We are using it to learn Ruby, RSpec and to practice various XP practices like pair programming and test-driven design.
Behaviour-driven development
This project has been developed with behaviour-driven development techniques using the RSpec library. This library provides output of the project specifications (unit tests) which allow any contributor to verify expected functionality before committing a change. Also, these automated specifications serve as a teaching tool for new participants in the project. Every specification in the collection serves as an example for a programmer trying to learn the behaviour of a particular object. RSpec also provides a code coverage chart to show how much of the application is exercised by the automated specifications.
