“The best flowcharting tool for Agile development”

Sometimes when someone says something really nice, you just have to spout about it.

As a flowchart tool maker, I use flowcharting in development all the time. True, most of my flowcharts are for the process, not the code, but, I’ve always had the feeling that I was a dying breed. That’s why it’s been such a surprise to find out that a good number of my customers are developers. What was an even bigger surprise was a comment a customer sent me tonight…

“I really like your software. It’s the best flowcharting tool for Agile development.”

Huh? That got my attention. I know a little about Agile processes but not a lot, so I emailed him back to ask. He explained…

“One of the goals of Agile is tight communication with the customer. It’d be great to have them here but just doesn’t happen for us. I end up emailing a lot. To verify complex operations, I quickly knock out a flowchart and send it to the customer.”

He goes on,

“It’s great because it’s all in Excel. Everybody has Excel. They can just edit it and email it back. In my world, anything that knocks down barriers between me and the customer is an Agile tool.”

Cool. It’s so nice when customers grasp hold of and appreciate the vision you had for a product. And this is the second customer in the last 3 days who’s told me something similar.