The story of how a simple Planning Poker became a workspace for estimation, retrospectives, and team progress.
The starting point
There were plenty of estimation tools. None felt professional, thoughtful, and genuinely pleasant to use at the same time. So the first commit landed on May 20, 2024. No grand roadmap — just an attempt to do one tool well.
May 20, 2024
Planning Poker
The very first version
No Jira, team spaces, or complex settings. The first version let people enter a room and vote. That was it. It was enough to put the central idea in front of a real team.
Fix the bug that became a feature
Alex
Mia
Sam
Emma
Noah
LeeYou
IrynaChoose your card
Choose your card 👇
The first real session
For the first time, the product was running outside development during my team’s actual Planning Poker. People had to enter, vote, and not break the flow that only I had seen before. Everything worked. That was the moment a small side project first became a working tool.
First session · status
Everything works
The product survived its first real meeting.
The first turning point
Before Jira, it was a good Planning Poker but not radically different from the alternatives. The integration moved voting closer to real work: issues, context, and attachments could be imported without manual copying. That was when it became clear Agilo could remove steps from a team workflow, not just display cards.
AG-142
Update the checkout flow
Attachments
Planning Poker
The issue, its context, and attachments
The next technical challenge
The core estimation flow worked. I could keep polishing cards forever — but building a complete interactive board sounded much more interesting. That is how retrospectives began: first as a harder technical challenge, then as the natural next step in the team process.
Sprint 24 retrospective
The product outgrew its name
One meeting became an agile flow: estimate future work, reflect on the completed sprint, and define the next actions. The name Agilo came from Agile — a workspace connecting team rituals around progress.
A decision of principle
While developing Agilo’s localizations, I made a deliberate decision not to add a Russian-language version of the website. Because of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, Agilo will not support the Russian language. Ukrainian remains a fundamental part of the product’s identity, while English makes Agilo accessible to international teams.
Українська · supported
English · supported
Russian · will not be available
Agilo today
Today Agilo connects Planning Poker, retrospectives, action items, team spaces, and Jira. It is a place where teams can estimate work, examine their process, and keep refining it from one meeting to the next.
Planning Poker
Retrospectives
Action items
What comes next
Agilo is moving toward a more stable team workspace and more integrations with systems teams already use. Not to replace every tool, but to connect them more clearly around team decisions.
The Agilo story is still being written.
I’m a software engineer and the person designing and developing Agilo — from the first idea and interface to the code and conversations with users.
I enjoy turning complex team processes into understandable tools. For me, Agilo is a way to explore how technology can help teams align, make decisions, and continuously improve the way they work.
Alexandr Voloshyn
Founder & developer of Agilo
Share your feedbackRun your next estimation or retrospective in a workspace that keeps growing around real team processes.
