Feature

Many project management tools — like Jira — were initially designed as bug trackers, interactive spreadsheets for bugs, whereas product requirements were created in Waterfall-style specs. Kanban boards were a later addition, inspired by manufacturing practices from Toyota car production.

Swinlanes flips this logic. It was not conceived as a bug tracker, it was designed to be feature builder. Every card represents a feature iteration, and any defects — seen as technical damage — are assigned directly to the iteration where they originated.

Unlike Kanban tickets, often treated like disposable napkins, feature iterations in Swinlanes are permanent fixtures. It’s in everyone’s best interest to keep them as engaging and useful as a actual book. The “Shape Up” approach by Jason Fried and DHH emphasises the importance of writing skills in software teams. Swinlanes also needs and hones this skill: the team should care for the productbase just as meticulously as they [should] do the codebase.