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Agile Project/Issue Management

May 23rd, 2006
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The dev shop I manage really has no choice but to be agile.  With lightning-fast changes in priorities, there’s no room for wholesale planning beyong a couple weeks out.  What’s missing, however, are the tools to make this all work.

Sure we do the best we can with JIRA (a fantastic traditional bug tracker) and MS Project (a not-so-fantastic project management tool), but there doesn’t seem to be a good selection of tools to mimick an agile team.

I want creamy visual objects that represent features which can be moved between developers.  I want a view of each developer’s workload for the next week, month and year.  I want to know in 10sec what’s going out when, and which tasks are the limiting factor.

The closest thing I’ve found is VersionOne, and I haven’t had a chance to fully evaluate it yet.  If anyone has any clues, I’m all ears.

chris Geek, Java

  1. Michael Leeds
    May 24th, 2006 at 10:14 | #1
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    Hello, my name is Michael Leeds and I work at VersionOne.

    You can find a customer posting on VersionOne with some great suggestions @ http://sonjayatandon.com/05-2006/how-to-setup-a-project-in-versionone/.

    You can also find out more about agile development @ http://www.versionone.com/Resources/AgileDevelopment.asp, and about VersionOne in particular @ http://www.versionone.com/products.asp and http://www.versionone.com/index.asp.

    Finally, we have a couple of special offers you can read about @ http://www.versionone.com/Pricing.asp.

    If we can assist with anything, feel free to contact me @ michael dot leeds at versionone dot net.

    –michael

  2. Jon Silvers
    May 24th, 2006 at 14:36 | #2
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    Hi Chris,

    Thanks for the feedback about JIRA! I posted a response to your blog on our blog and it includes some links to resources you may (or may not :) )find helpful. http://blogs.atlassian.com/news/2006/05/breddynet_1.html

  3. sonjayatandon
    June 2nd, 2006 at 11:10 | #3
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    A collegue of mine turned me on to VersionOne. He used it on his last project and the team was very satisfied with the tool.

    Based on the reference, I contacted VersionOne and they set me up with a 30-day trial. I am use the XP flavor of the tool (you can also pick Scrum, AgileUp, and I think there was another option — features are pretty much the same, just the terminology changes).

    Even though I had 30 free days, I purchased the licenses I needed after about 10 days — it was VERY clear to me this was a ‘must have’ tool for the success of my project. They are hosting the tool for me (you can pick that option, or host it yourself).

    I am now closing out my second iteration and I am very happy with it. It very quickly gives me the information I need to know to evaluate how the iteration is doing, and insight into what I need to do to drive the iteration to closure.

    While it doesn’t have drag and drop of Stories from one developer to another (you do that with a pick list), it DOES have drag and drop of a story from one iteration to another — and that feature just plain rocks.

    I would recommend giving the trial a run — you get 5 licenses. Also, in addition to the article Mike talked about, I will be writting up “best practices” articles as I go through my project. Next one on is on how to use the tool for the initial planning process.

    if you have any other questions, just drop them as a comment on the article Mike mentioned, and I will answer if I can.

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