The document provides an overview of agile tools for collaboration, project management, portfolio management, and continuous integration. It discusses why tools are useful for growing teams and product complexity, when tools are most valuable, and key areas that need coverage, including collaboration, project management, portfolio management, and continuous integration. Examples of tool categories and specific tools are also listed for each area.

1.  @dkeisari
Suitable SaaS solutions for collaboration, project management,
portfolio management and continuous integration
A general intro
to agile tools
#AgilityLab
Sept. 17th
2015

2.  @dkeisari
About me
●
Dennis Kayser
– CEO & Co-founder Forecast.it
●
I used to work for:
– IBM, Varien, IMT Labs,...
●
I have a degree in:
– M.Sc. Computer Science
●
I'm certified in:
– Kanban, Scrum, PRINCE2

3.  @dkeisari

4.  @dkeisari
Tools, tools, tools

5.  @dkeisari
Tools, why?
●
To start, the Agile Manifesto emphasizes “…individuals and
interactions over process and tools…,” which begs the
question, why are we discussing agile tools? Do
development teams need to use a tool to produce good
software? NO! But in order to be successful, organizations
and teams DO need to deal with the issues that accompany
growing teams and product complexity.
●
Agile is founded on simplicity and the tools used should
reflect this.
●
It is easy to see why the right tool may be the defining
factor for a successful transition to agile.

6.  @dkeisari
Tools, when?
●
A tool is extremely valuable when
– You have distributed teams and you are finding it difficult to keep in sync
– You want to involve customers, stakeholders or management and they are not in
the room with you
– You would like historical data or archival records of all the past actions in the
project
– You need to keep a record of data for compliance purposes
– You want to calculate certain metrics every day and it is too time consuming to
do it by hand
– You need to coordinate multiple teams together

7.  @dkeisari
Some 2015 stats
Source: http://www.softwareadvice.com/project-management/buyerview/smb-report-2015/

8.  @dkeisari
Initial questions for finding suitable tools
●
How large is the team(s)?
●
Is the team(s) distributed in any way?
●
Are we building a product or running projects?
●
Are we running projects for clients or internally?
●
Is time registration important or not?
●
Do we have a portfolio of projects we can/must
prioritize?
●
...

9.  @dkeisari
How to evaluate – a matter of taste
Scientific Practical

10.  @dkeisari
Example of tools that are not very agile...

11.  @dkeisari
Key areas where we need tool coverage
●
Collaboration
– Communication, file sharing, documents, screen sharing, ...
●
Project Management
– Projects, clients, work, plans & progress, ...
●
Project & Portfolio Management (PPM)
– Priorities, strategic drivers, resource allocation, risk, ...
●
Continuous Integration (CI)
– Builds, deployment, code, ...

12.  @dkeisari
High level overview of these tool areas
Project & Portfolio Management (PPM)
Continuous Integration
Builds, deployment, code, ...
Collaboration
Communication,
file sharing,
documents, screen
sharing, ...
Agile Project Management
Single projects, clients, work, plans &
progress, ...
Waterfall Project
Management
Single projects, clients, work, plans &
progress, ...
Program Management & Resources
Several related projects and all resources
Portfolio Management
Identifying, prioritizing, authorizing, managing, and controlling projects & programs
according to strategic drivers, capacity, risk, budget, ...
Doing the right
projects
Doing projects
right

13.  @dkeisari
Let's divide tools into 4 categories
1) The simplest
2) Generic
3) Old-school
4) Agile

14.  @dkeisari
The simplest – boards, markers etc.
Pros Cons
● Easy to learn and easy to use
● Flexible, may be adopted for teams
● Inexpensive
● Doesn’t work for distributed teams
● Doesn’t work for large teams
● Lack of reporting
● Manual remaining time update, burn
down update etc.

15.  @dkeisari
Generic – spreadsheets, wikis etc.
Pros Cons
● Easy to learn and easy to use
● Flexible, may be adopted for a team
(not too many at the same time)
● Inexpensive
● Doesn’t work for distributed teams
● Doesn’t work for large teams
● Lack of reporting
● Manual, error-prone remaining time,
burn down etc.

16.  @dkeisari
Old-school – Classical PM tools
Pros Cons
● Most likely already exist in the
company
● People allocation support
● No (good) agile concept support
● Relies heavily on dependencies
● Limited reporting
● Limited visibility

17.  @dkeisari
Agile – web-based, intuitive tools
Pros Cons
● Works for distributed teams
● Works for large teams
● Real-time reporting
● Integrated solutions (API)
● Not as visible as a physical board
● Sometimes hard to adopt for existing
development process
● Can have a significant learning curve

18.  @dkeisari
Example of how this could be scored
Category Weight Simplest Tools Agile Web-based Software Spreadsheets
Planning process 3 4 - tangible and exciting 3 – simple, but less exciting
and visible
2 - doable
Plan visibility 2 2 – good for the team, poor for
execs
2– good for execs, poor for the
team
1 – poor for all
Plan update 1 3 – re-stick some notes 4 – few clicks, from anywhere 4 – move some rows or mark
them for release
Velocity tracking, Time
tracking
2 1 – manual, asking each person 4 – automatic 2 – manual, asking each
person
Burn Down Update and
other charts update
1 1 – manual 4 – automatic 4 – automatic
Communication 3 4 – just great 2 – some but not as good as in
person
1 – no
Reporting 3 1 – poor reports since all data
offline
4 – almost endless reporting
capabilities
3 – good reporting
capabilities
People involvement 3 4 – everyone involved 1 – may become a problem 1 – may become a problem
Cost 2 4 – almost free 2 – some tools are expensive
others not
4 – almost free
Total:
sum(weight * score)
57 54 43
| 1 - Poor | 2 – Average | 3 – Good | 4 – Great |

19.  @dkeisari
Collaboration - Communication, file sharing, documents, screen sharing, ...

20.  @dkeisari
Collaboration – List of tools
●
https://www.box.com/- File share
●
https://campfirenow.com/ - Chat
●
https://www.google.com/drive/ - File
share
●
https://www.dropbox.com/ - File share
●
https://www.flowdock.com/ - Chat
●
https://hangouts.google.com/ - Chat +
VOIP + Video
●
https://www.atlassian.com/software/hipch
at
- Chat
●
https://www.join.me/ - Meeting
●
https://www.mindmeister.com/ - Mind
mapping
●
http://popplet.com/ - Mind mapping
●
https://slack.com/ - Chat
●
https://trello.com/ - Simple boards
●
…

21.  @dkeisari
Project Management - Projects, clients, work, plans & progress, ...

22.  @dkeisari
Project Management – List of tools
●
http://www.axosoft.com/
●
https://basecamp.com/
●
http://forecast.it/
●
https://www.atlassian.com/softwar
e/jira
●
http://leankit.com/
●
https://www.thoughtworks.com/mi
ngle/
●
https://www.pivotaltracker.com/
●
https://www.proofhub.com/
●
https://www.rallydev.com/
●
https://www.versionone.com/
●
https://www.targetprocess.com/
●
https://www.visualstudio.com/en-u
s/products/tfs-overview-vs.aspx
●
...

23.  @dkeisari
Portfolio Management - Priorities, strategic drivers, resources, ...

24.  @dkeisari
Portfolio Management – List of tools
●
http://www.daptiv.com/
●
http://epmlive.com/
●
http://forecast.it/
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https://www.innotas.com/
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http://www.planview.com/
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https://www.rallydev.com/
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http://www.workfront.com/
●
...

25.  @dkeisari
Continuous integration - Builds, deployment, code, ...

26.  @dkeisari
Continuous integration – List of tools
●
https://circleci.com/
●
https://jenkins-ci.org/
●
https://codeship.com/
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https://www.jetbrains.com/teamcity/
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https://drone.io/
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https://www.atlassian.com/software/bamboo
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https://travis-ci.org/
●
...

27.  @dkeisari
Other useful tools
●
http://www.elastic.io/ - Connect your SaaS apps
●
http://www.taskclone.com/ - Clone tasks between apps
●
https://zapier.com/ - Connect your SaaS apps

28.  @dkeisari
Which tools do we use? - We eat our own dog food
●
Collaboration
– Google Drive, Mail, Hangouts
– Forecast.it
– Skype
– (Slack)
●
Project Management + (Project & Portfolio Management)
– Forecast.it
●
Continuous Integration
– Jenkins
– Cloudbees
– Maven, ...

29.  @dkeisari
General recommendations
●
Try to minimize the total number of tools
– Too many tools results in no-one using them
●
Try a few different ones – do not fall for the hype
– All tools have pros and cons
●
Prefer tools that have open APIs
– Easier to move and integrate
●
Avoid legacy enterprise solutions
– Typically the ROI is not there and the implementation + training is gruesome
●
Data is your best weapon to ensure predictability
– If you choose the right tools data is collected for you

30.  @dkeisari
Thank you!
 @dkeisari
 dennis@forecast.it
 https://dk.linkedin.com/in/denniskayser
 http://forecast.it/
 http://blog.forecast.it/