General intro to agile tools - Forecast.it

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

 @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

 @dkeisari
Tools, tools, tools

 @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.

 @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

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

 @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?
●
...

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

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

 @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, ...

 @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

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

 @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.

 @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.

 @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

 @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

 @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 |

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

 @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
●
…

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

 @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
●
...

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

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

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

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

 @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

 @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, ...

 @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

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

General intro to agile tools - Forecast.it

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