Say hello to the new iceScrum tool: iceScrum Server! You can also say goodbye to the old bundle.

iceScrum Server allows you to download the latest version of iceScrum, to configure it and launch it in no time. A dedicated dedicated documentation explains how to use it.

There are significant differences between iceScrum Server and the old bundle, mainly the fact that iceScrum Server is far easier to use.

Another difference: iceScrum Server is available for Windows and Mac OS (only). Thus, someone asked “Please consider unix as target platform (like in the past)”. The answer is: we still consider Unix as a target platform. Moreover, we consider it as a major one!

Here is the full story behind this big change:

At first, the bundle was intended to provide an easy way to try iceScrum. There were two goals:
1 – Allowing people with few computing skills to try iceScrum,
2 – Allowing people having good computing skills to try iceScrum faster than with a custom install.
In both cases, the bundle wasn’t intended to be used in a real production context.

However, we noticed the bundle was largely misused as a production server. We think this is because the install information (a blog post on icescrum.org and many posts on the forum) wasn’t unified and clear enough.

Thus, we wrote a detailed and unified Install guide that explains all that you need to run iceScrum and to configure it properly. The install guide is a great help for people installing and administrating an iceScrum server, many of them being Unix servers.

We also noticed that the bundle sometimes required computing skills to be properly used, so the first goal wasn’t fulfilled. Thus, we developed a desktop application that configures itself quite properly. Please note that, just as the old bundle, iceScrum Server isn’t intended to be used in a real production context, as explained in the documentation.

However, you may know that it requires hard work to publish an application for all available environments, especially for Unix environments. Thus, we decided to support Windows and Mac OS only, the systems that are the most used by the first bundle target: people with few computing skills.

Actually, we didn’t forget Unix users at all: we think that given the Install guide, it will require no time for a Unix user to configure a Tomcat server and having iceScrum running on it. Additionally, there is still the most straightforward way to try iceScrum online (for free): iceScrum Cloud.

iceScrum Server is here thanks to your feedback, we hope you will enjoy it as much as we do.