Spira Plan Overview Presentation

© Copyright 2006-2017, Inflectra Corporation - 1 -
SpiraPlan®
- Product Information
Accelerating Project Delivery with Agile Project Management

Objectives
 After viewing this presentation you will:
 Understand the challenges involved in planning and
managing projects and why traditional waterfall
methodologies have failed to deliver projects on-time
and on-budget.
 Have a strong grasp on the project management
features provided by SpiraPlan®
 Have learned about the benefits of using SpiraPlan®
to
plan, execute and manage your project

Agenda
 Why use Agile Methodologies
 Project Management Challenges
 SpiraPlan®
Overview
 Feature Walkthrough
 Requirements Management
 Release Planning
 Iteration Planning
 Task Tracking
 Bug / Issue Tracking
 Source Code Integration
 Integration / Migration Options
 Synchronization with external bug-trackers
 Migration from other systems

Why Agile Methodologies?
 Traditionally projects are delivered in a series of phases
that are based on increasing levels of certainty around
the system being built:
 However this approach has some drawbacks:
 It is not flexible to changes in customer requirements
 Time is wasted building features that nobody needs
 The end user cannot give feedback till it’s completed coded
 You don’t know how stable the system is until the end
Requirements
Gathering
Business
Design
Unit
Testing
Traditional Waterfall Methodology
Release Complete
Technical
Design
Systems Development
Integration
Testing
Acceptance
Testing
(UAT)

The Agile Approach
 Instead of phases, projects are broken down into
releases and iterations. At the end of each iteration you
have a fully functioning system that could be released:
Requirements
Gathering
Business
Design
Unit
Testing
Traditional Waterfall Methodology
Release Complete
Technical
Design
Systems Development
Integration
Testing
Acceptance
Testing
(UAT)
Limited
Upfront
Planning
Release #1 Release #2
Agile Methodology
It 1 It 2 It 3 It 4 It 5 It 6
Release #3
It 7 It 8 It 9
Release #4
It 10 It 11 It 12
Iteration N
Iteration N
Iteration
Planning
Iteration
Planning
Release Complete
Development, Continuous Integration, Unit
Testing, Functional & Acceptance Testing
Development, Continuous Integration, Unit
Testing, Functional & Acceptance Testing

The Agile Approach (3)
 The requirements for the project do not have to be codified upfront,
instead they are prioritized and scheduled for each iteration:
 The requirements are composed of ‘stories’ that can be
scheduled into a particular release and iteration
Iteration
Iteration
Scope
Tested,
Integrated
Working
System
Iteration
Plan
Release Plan

The Agile Approach (3)
 There are several different agile methods:
 Scrum / Extreme Programming (XP)
 Kanban / Lean
 Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe)
 Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD)
 They have specific features that make them better suited
to different situations, but in general, they follow the
same basic agile principles*:
 Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
 Working software over comprehensive documentation
 Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
 Responding to change over following a plan
*Source: Agile Manifesto - http://agilemanifesto.org

The Existing Project Management Toolkit
 Traditionally, Software Development organizations use
the following tools to manage their lifecycles:
 Requirements stored in MS-Word documents, MS-Excel
spreadsheets or expensive tools such a RequisitePro, Doors
 High-level project plan (GANTT chart) developed in tools such
as Microsoft Project, Primavera and printed out for reference
 Project estimates prepared using a combination of the high-level
project plan and specialized standalone MS-Excel spreadsheets
 Detailed schedules maintained by individual team members
using MS-Excel, Whiteboards or Groupware solutions
 MS-Access, MS-Excel or standalone web-based bug-tracking
system for tracking issues and defects

Project Management Toolkit Challenges
 As the static project plan with its discrete phases has
become replaced by the more flexible agile approach,
the old set of tools no longer works:
 The project requirements and scope are not locked-down so the
schedule of releases and iterations needs to be connected to the
requirements backlog in real-time
 The project schedule is constantly evolving, with stories being
reallocated to different iterations and team members re-
estimating the number of stories they can complete (velocity)
 Defects and stories need to be managed in the same
environment, with the project estimates and schedules taking
account of both at all times
 SpiraPlan is explicitly designed to address these issues
and provide an integrated solution…

SpiraPlan®
Overview

© Copyright 2006-2017, Inflectra Corporation
SpiraTeam®
The Inflectra®
Product Suite
SpiraTest®
Requirements, Test &
Defect Management
SpiraPlan®
Agile Project
Management
KronoDesk®
IT Support & Help Desk Ticketing
Rapise®
Test Automation Platform (Web, GUI, Services)
TaraVault™ - Source Code Hosting
We provide a complete suite to manage your entire lifecycle:

SpiraTeam®
SpiraPlan – The Agile Delivery Solution
SpiraTest®
Requirements, Test &
Defect Management
SpiraPlan®
Agile Project
Management
KronoDesk®
IT Support & Help Desk Ticketing
Rapise®
Test Automation Platform (Web, GUI, Services)
TaraVault™ - Source Code Hosting
SpiraPlan provides the complete agile toolkit, with integrated code hosting:

Product Overview
 Instead of having to buy separate requirements management,
project planning and defect tracking tools, SpiraPlan provides a
complete Agile Project Management solution in one package.
Agile Development & Project Management
Web-based User Interface
Project and User Management Core Functionality
Robust APIs
User Stories Iterations & Sprints Tasks & Defects

Why Choose SpiraPlan?
 The top reasons that our customers choose SpiraPlan
over other solutions are:
 It is a complete solution that includes requirements management,
release planning, iteration planning, task estimation and defect tracking
all fully integrated from day one.
 Highly intuitive web application that provides a complete picture of a
project’s status and health yet requires only a web-browser.
 Methodology Agnostic – SpiraPlan can be used equally web for any
agile methodology – including Scrum, Kanban, SAFe, DAD, AUP
 Ability to leverage your existing technology investments. SpiraPlan
integrates with many third-party defect-management systems and
software configuration management (SCM) systems.
 In addition, we provide superb technical support that ensures that
enquiries and questions are dealt with in a timely and professional
manner.

Feature Snapshot
 Develop high-level requirements
with initial estimates
 Prioritize and schedule
requirements for each iteration
 Determine resourcing levels to
deliver required features
 Planning board for easy
communication of backlog
 Decompose requirements into
detailed task breakdown
 Integrated web-based document
management.
 Allocate tasks to developers
based on task estimates
 Load-balance project
resources to maximize project
velocity
 Track issues and defects
against project schedule
 View project velocity,
burndown and burnup reports
 Customizable dashboards of
key project information
 Integration with multiple IDEs
Listed below are some of the many great features that makes
SpiraPlan agile project management software the leading choice
for companies and organizations worldwide:

Competitive Landscape
 We believe that SpiraPlan offers an unbeatable combination of
capability and affordability:
Breadth of Features / Capability
Affordability
VersionOne
AxoSoft
JIRA Agile
ScrumWorks
Mingle
XPlanner
SpiraPlan
IncumbentsUncompetitive
ChallengersNiche Players
Source: Inflectra Corporation, 2016
AcuNote
CA Rally
IBM RTC
LeanKit
TargetProcess

Representative Customers
 The following are some of the organizations who are using
SpiraPlan to manage their application development lifecycles:
Energy & Industrial
Government
Retail & Consumer Goods
Healthcare & Bio-Technology
Financial & Business Services
Information Technology
Transportation & Hospitality
Telecommunications

Testimonials
 “…My team has used SpiraPlan for over 6 months and have been satisfied
with the Project Management and collaboration features of the software. Will
definitely use Inflectra products again.“
- Dan – Vector One Consulting
 “…SpiraPlan from Inflectra is a lifesaver! It was very easy to use, organized,
and user-friendly. I will definitely recommend and utilize this program in the
future.”
- Lindsay Snider
 “…We use Inflectra software in many of our projects and we are proud to offer
their tools to our customers. It is also big pleasure to cooperate with the
Inflectra team.“
- Viktor Tarnavskyi – Soflab Technology
 “The team here really have a great product on their hands with helpfulness
and ease. Who wouldn't use this software for business planning needs?! ...“
- Mika

Solution Partner Network
 We have an extensive worldwide partner network that is used to
provide global consulting and training services:
North America
Asia
Australia
South America & Mexico
Europe
Middle East & Africa

How Are We Different?
1. We help you manage the entire project lifecycle—not just
planning, development, or testing—all of it!
2. Our products are actually understandable, easy to use and
affordable
3. We provide exceptional support with every purchase—our
support is so good, customers call us to help fix products with
their other tools (!)
This is validated by our ~ 80% customer retention rate.

Feature Walkthrough

Personalized ‘My Page’ Dashboard
SpiraPlan provides you with a personalized ‘dashboard’ of all your key
information, consolidated onto a single page for you to take immediate action.
RSS Feeds of your information are available

Project Dashboards
Inside SpiraPlan, each project has a dashboard home-page that summarizes all
of the information regarding the project into a comprehensive, easily digestible
form. It provides a “one-stop-shop” for people interested in understanding the
overall status and health of the project at a glance.

Project Portfolio Management
Projects in SpiraPlan are organized into Project Groups. This lets you report on all
of the projects in a specific organization, customer or division. You can see the
aggregate status of the group as whole and in addition, compare the relative
health of the different projects in the group.

Requirements Management
SpiraPlan lets you to quickly and easily organize requirements to reflect
dependencies and relationships. Requirements can be prioritized, estimated
and also associated with a specific release. Each requirement is displayed
with its associated development task progress.

Capture User Stories & Use Cases
SpiraPlan supports the capture and management of user stories and use-
cases as part of the requirements definition process. Use cases can be
stored in the system along with their associated scenarios.

Requirements Elaboration (Tasks)
SpiraPlan lets you decompose each requirement into lower-level Task work items. These can
be assigned to team members and individually estimated.
SpiraPlan lets you compare the top-down story point estimate with the detailed task estimates.

Release Planning
SpiraPlan® provides the ability to manage the list of releases / versions of the software
being delivered. SpiraPlan supports iterations/sprints for agile projects as well as
phases for waterfall and/or hybrid projects giving you maximum flexibility.

Product Backlog Planning
The list of user stories, requirements, defects and features is called the
Product Backlog. SpiraPlan lets you organize the backlog by component,
package or priority. You can order and categorize them by simple drag and
drop editing. This is called backlog grooming.

Sprint / Iteration Planning
The requirements, user stories, tasks and outstanding bugs and issues can
be scheduled against the different iterations / sprints in the release.
The system will calculate the available effort as items are added.

Scrum Task Boards
SpiraPlan includes Scrum Task Boards that let you see the individual tasks
assigned to each of the Sprints and Iterations as well as by-person.

Kanban Boards
SpiraPlan provides a Kanban view of the project, where you can see all of the
requirements planned for each release organized according to their position in the
lifecycle. This view lets you see the flow of the requirements and identify then rectify any
bottlenecks.

Task Progress Tracking
SpiraPlan provides the ability to edit assign and track the project tasks. You can
search, filter and sort the list of tasks to quickly find those that are behind
schedule or are late starting. Task can be grouped into folders to make it easy
to organize by track, stream or functional area.

Resource Tracking
Once the requirements, tasks and incidents have been scheduled against
the iteration plan, you can use the Resource Tracking screens to view the
total assigned workload for the members of the project and determine the
resource assignments and perform load balancing if necessary.

Bug / Issue Tracking
SpiraPlan offers a complete bug tracking solution that is fully integrated with your planning
system. Bug tracking features include support for customizable workflows and fields, flexible
reporting, configurable email notifications, and fully editable statuses, priorities, severities and
bug types.

Document Management
SpiraPlan includes an integrated web-based document management system
that allows project members to upload documents in a secure, centralized
location, with support for folder organization, documentation taxonomies and
meta-tagging as well as built-in version control.
Unlike a standalone tool, these documents can then be connected to
SpiraPlan artifacts (requirements, tasks, incidents) to provide the complete
picture to users.

Document Version Tracking
Once uploaded to the central knowledge repository, revisions to the
documents can be uploaded so that there is complete audit trail of all
changes made to artifacts and associated documentation in the project.

Instant Messaging & Collaboration
- 38 -
SpiraPlan includes an integrated instant-messenger that lets users
collaborate and communicate in real-time regardless of geographic
location. The discussions can be tagged against specific artifacts in the
system, so that they become part of the artifact discussion thread.

Fully Mobile Responsive
SpiraPlan has been designed to optimize its features on any device, whether
that be a large desktop monitor, a tablet or mobile phone.
The Agile Planning Boards built into SpiraPlan allow you to see the complete
project on large screen devices, with the ability to easily drag and drop items.

Customizable Fields
You can customize each of the fields used in the bug tracking module to suit
your own business needs - including types, status, priority and severity. You
can even associate your own color schemes with the different values.

Customizable Workflows & Notifications
Different types of defect, requirement and task can follow their own customized
workflows. This allows you to tailor SpiraPlan to the business processes
used by your organization. Each workflow consists of a customizable set of
steps and transitions. In addition each transition can be used to send email
notifications to the detector, owner or users in a certain project group.

Attachments & Screenshot Capture
You can upload document attachments to Requirements, Tasks, Releases and
Incidents in the system. Each of these artifacts includes an attachment view that
allows users to view the existing attachments, delete an existing attachment and
upload new documents from their workstation.
In addition, there is a built-in screen capture utility for quickly adding
screenshots to a test execution or defect report

Software Configuration Management (SCM)
For those customers using the cloud hosted version of SpiraPlan, we offer a
free source code hosting solution – TaraVault based on the industry
standard Git and Subversion platforms. For on-premise customers you can
link you existing source code repositories using our gallery of plugins.

Source Code Integration
In addition to being able to view the source code repository, using
SpiraPlan you can link artifacts to specific source code revisions. This allows
you to associate requirements, tasks or defects/incidents with the
corresponding code changes. This provides end-to-end traceability from
requirements to working software code.

Build Management
- 45 -
SpiraPlan provides the ability to integrate with continuous integration build
servers such as Jenkins and TeamCity so that the status of builds can be
recorded in SpiraPlan and linked to source code revisions and incidents. This
provides traceability for each build, so that you can see what was changed in
each build and what was fixed.

Customizable Reporting Dashboard
SpiraPlan includes an extensive reports library that contains our of the box reports
for typical project management needs. In addition, SpiraPlan allows you to build a
customized reports using built-in custom report writer.

Timecard Submission
- 47 -
SpiraPlan includes a built-in timecard entry system that lets developers
quickly and easily enter the time spent each day on their assigned tasks and
defects as well as report the time remaining for completion.

Change History Tracking
All of the changes made to a particular artifact in the system are tracked by
SpiraPlan, so that at any time you can view the complete audit trail of all the
changes made to an artifact.
SpiraPlan features full version-control capabilities that allow you to rollback
specific changes and revert the artifact back to a prior revision.

Artifact Associations
Each artifact can be linked to an unlimited number of other
requirements, defects, tasks and source code revisions, providing
traceability between related artifacts. For example a change request
that turns into a new requirement can be associated to preserve the
pedigree of the requirement.

Custom Properties
In addition to the built-in fields that are associated with each type of
artifact, you can also define custom properties for each type of
artifact in the system.
The system supports a variety of different field types including: text,
rich-text, dropdown lists, user selectors, and date-fields

Visual Studio & Eclipse IDE Integration
Developers can work on assigned requirements, tasks and incidents directly
inside their Integrated Development Environment (IDE).
SpiraPlan has plug-ins available for both Eclipse and Visual Studio.
Research has shown that allowing developers to use the same tool to
develop their code and manage their workload enhances efficiency and
improves data accuracy.

Email Integration
- 52 -
SpiraPlan has a built-in email notification engine that lets you define
custom email templates and notification events. This enables the system to
send out notifications when specific events occur (e.g. user is assigned a
test case, the priority of a requirement changes, etc.).
In addition, SpiraPlan can connect to your email system and retrieve users’
comments and attach them to the appropriate artifact in the system. It can
also create new incidents directly from emails, saving users’ time.

Integration / Migration Options

Configuration Management
Integration Overview
 SpiraPlan has a very flexible architecture and has been integrated
with a variety of external tools and systems:
SpiraPlan
User Stories
Sprints
Tasks
Defects
Documents
Bugzilla
Defect-Tracking
Jira
Defect-Tracking
Visual Studio
Defect-Tracking
Various Tools
Requirements
MS-Office
Legacy Data
SCM Tools
Source Code
TaraVault
Source Code
Selenium-RC
Functional
Testing
FogBugz
Defect-Tracking
TestComplete
Functional &
Load Testing
Development Environment
Eclipse
Task Mgt
Jenkins/Hudson
CI / Builds

Integration Options
 SpiraPlan comes with a wide variety of plugins and connectors:
Developer IDEs
Legacy ALM Tools
Modelling Tools
CI / Build Servers
Bug-Tracking Tools
Legacy Data Import
Source Code Management
Help Desk Tools

Introduction to Agile using SpiraPlan
- 56 -

Introduction to Agile using SpiraPlan (1)
 The first step is to define the project’s requirements.
 This is a hierarchical list of all the features that the system needs
to fulfill (in some methodologies they are called user stories)
 They can be entered by hand, imported from a variety of tools:
 MS-Office documents such as Excel, Word or Project
 Modeling tools such as RequisitePro or Enterprise Architect
 They can be prioritized, contain attachments, be cross-linked
and have project-specific attributes
 Don’t worry about getting it all right first time, this is Agile, so the
requirements will evolve during the project!
Define
Requirements

Introduction to Agile using SpiraPlan(2)
 Next, plan out the project’s high-level schedule
 Include the major releases, minor releases and optionally builds
and iterations depending on desired granularity
 You can now assign the different lower-level requirements to
each of the iterations so that it is possible to start planning the
features that will be developed in each release and iteration
based on customer priority and business value.
 In some methodologies (e.g. Scrum) the requirements list is
called the Project Backlog and iterations are called Sprints.
Define
Requirements
Release Planning

 Now you start the iteration planning (for the first one):
 Decompose the requirements into detailed project tasks that can
be prioritized and individually estimated. These estimates can be
then compared against the top-down requirement estimate
 Assign any defects that were raised in the previous
release/iteration into the current iteration for resolution
 Potentially re-assign the requirements and tasks to different
iterations, if there is not enough time/resources to support the
planned functionality
 In some methodologies (Scrum) this is called ‘sprint planning’
Define
Requirements
Release PlanningIteration Planning

 Now you can schedule the team members and load
balance the task resourcing allocation:
 Assign the discrete project tasks and defects to the members of
the development team staffed to the iteration
 Team members view their individual schedule and task
assignments to determine if they can perform all the tasks
 The detailed task schedule is updated by the team members,
with the release/iteration schedule reflecting the updates so that
the management can make changes to the master schedule
Define
Requirements
Schedule &
Resourcing

Introduction to Agile using SpiraPlan (5)
 Real-time status of the progress of the iteration and
release is visible by the management during execution:
 The team members update the actual effort, remaining effort and
predicted end-date values of their various tasks as they
complete the assigned workload
 When tasks are completed, or if exception conditions occur (late
starting tasks, late finishing tasks, overruns, etc.), the status of
the overall iteration and release is updated to give early
indication of needed management intervention
 In addition the progress of the tasks is linked back to the original
requirements, so there is full requirements traceability
Define
Requirements
Schedule &
Resourcing
Tracking &
Reporting

Questions?
Please contact sales@inflectra.com if you have additional questions.

Legal Notices
 DISCLAIMER: All product comparison diagrams have been made
on the basis of information available on respective product websites.
The analysis and views expressed in the diagrams and the
information made available are purely those of Inflectra
Corporation. It is possible that competing products have additional
features not mentioned on the product websites.

Spira Plan Overview Presentation

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