When we first started building ScrumBuddy, we thought we knew what we were doing.
The plan was harmless enough:
A light companion to help scrum teams do refinement better, clean up backlogs, and survive ceremonies with fewer headaches.
Nothing revolutionary, just useful.
But then we made the classic mistake every solopreneur, indie hacker, and small team eventually makes:
We built something… and immediately ran face-first into our own real problems.
Not scrum problems.
Not process problems.
Not textbook-productivity problems.
Software development problems.
The same ones all of you deal with daily:
- Vague requirements that feel like an incomplete grocery list.
- AI generating code that looks right until you try to run it.
- Estimates that are basically dice rolls.
- Context scattered across Jira, Slack, Google Docs, your brain, and four forgotten Notion pages.
- A thousand tabs = a thousand tiny failures waiting to happen.
And it hit us:
Scrum wasn’t the pain. Software development itself was the pain.
So we pivoted.
Then pivoted again.
Then again, until ScrumBuddy stopped being a “scrum tool” and started becoming a new engineering system.
The Early Days (AKA: The “Maybe We Should Throw This Out” Phase)
Early versions of ScrumBuddy were fine.
They refined stories. They helped with estimates. They made ceremonies less painful.
But they didn’t solve our problems.
And nothing wakes a product team up faster than the realization that they wouldn’t even use the thing they’re building.
Market research confirmed another uncomfortable truth:
Developers hear the word “scrum” and instantly brace for impact.
So we stopped building for “scrum teams” and started building for:
- Solo devs
- Founders
- Freelancers
- Vibe coders
Anyone building software without a 30-person engineering department doing PRDs, QA, and architecture reviews
Once we focused on solving our own problems, the direction snapped into place.
Building in Public (And Unexpected Turning Points)
We built in public because, honestly, we didn’t have the luxury not to. We needed early feedback, real users, and honest reactions.
There were moments that shaped the product:
1.“No tool actually fixes this problem.”
This wasn’t just something users said, it was our own team’s frustration.
There was no platform that solved the core issue of incomplete requirements leading to broken AI outputs and endless rework.
So we built the tool we wished existed.
2.Surprising use cases
We saw solo devs using ScrumBuddy not for Scrum at all, but for:
- Scoping new SaaS ideas
- Validating architecture
- Grooming freelance client requirements
- Rewriting terrible briefs into something actually buildable
- Auto-generating test plans
- Turning vague prompts into production-ready specs
The solopreneurs basically taught us what ScrumBuddy really was.
3.Feedback that changed direction
The biggest shift:
Users didn’t want another AI assistant.
They wanted an AI system. Something orchestrated, structured, opinionated.
That one insight changed the entire architecture.
Technical Challenges (AKA: The Octopus Wrestling Matches)
If you’ve read the Substack posts, you’ve seen the scars.
Some of the biggest battles:
- LLMs hallucinating architecture → solved through strict spec-driven pipelines
- Jira/Azure integration madness → APIs that behave like moody houseplants
- Estimation logic modelling → building estimation that isn’t “AI guessing” but actual scope logic
- Multi-agent code generation → managing multiple LLMs coordinating without stepping on each other
- UI that doesn’t overwhelm → how do you show structured specifications without building a cockpit dashboard?
Every victory took three failures to earn.
But the system we have now is something we’re genuinely proud of.
The Emotional Journey: All the Messy Parts
This is the stuff solopreneurs will understand immediately:
- Days when momentum felt unstoppable
- Nights where one dependency bug made us question everything
- Long loops of “are we insane?” mixed with “this might actually change things”
- A Slack channel full of screenshots labeled simply: WHY??
- The quiet 3am breakthroughs no one sees except your version history
- The growing belief that we weren’t chasing an app, we were chasing a new way to build
ScrumBuddy is the product of equal parts frustration, obsession, and refusal to accept the status quo of modern dev workflows.
So… What Does the Beta Mean? And Why Should Solopreneurs Care?
The beta isn’t “a launch.”
It’s our first public step into AI-orchestrated software engineering.
ScrumBuddy is built on a simple belief:
When requirements are complete, AI can do extraordinary things. When they’re incomplete, everything breaks.
So ScrumBuddy doesn’t guess.
It structures.
It takes ideas and turns them into:
- Features
- Scenarios
- Acceptance criteria
- Architecture
- Estimates
- Test plans
- Safe, multi-agent code generation
- Validation
- PR guidance
All inside one system.
No scattered tools.
No duct-taped workflows.
No hallucinated code that ignores half the requirements.
Just clarity → structure → orchestration → delivery.
What’s Next? (And Where We Want Solopreneurs to Walk With Us)
This beta is built for:
- Indie hackers launching fast
- Solo founders shipping without a team
- Freelancers needing leverage
- Micro teams wanting enterprise-level consistency
- Anyone tired of the “reinvent the process every project” chaos
But long term?
We want ScrumBuddy to be the platform that unifies the ecosystem; where design, engineering, AI agents, validation, and delivery all live inside one intelligent system.
We’re not replacing developers.
We’re removing the waste between their ideas and their output.
And this beta is the beginning.
If You’re a Solopreneur on Indie Hackers… This Is Your Invitation
Try the beta.
Break it.
Push it.
Tell us where it sucks and where it shines.
You’re exactly the type of builder we designed ScrumBuddy for because you’re the ones who don’t have 20 engineers, QA teams, PMs, and architects smoothing the edges for you.
We built this because the tools we wanted didn’t exist.
Now they do.
And we’d love for you to build the next chapter with us.
Test ScrumBuddy for yourself: https://app.scrumbuddy.com/
Top comments (0)