Top 10 Considerations for Enterprise Agile Tools.

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1 Top 10 for Enterprise Agile Tools

2 Which Enterprise Agile Tool is Right for You? With more than a decade of experience helping organizations scale their agile initiatives, we ve seen first-hand most of the pitfalls teams run into when they don t plan ahead from a tooling perspective. What often starts as a pilot project can soon evolve into an initiative spanning dozens of agile teams and projects. As agile gains momentum in your software development organization, you ll need a tool that can grow with you and support your emerging business needs.

3 Align Your Tool with Your Vision Choose an agile management tool that will allow you to realize your agile vision down the road. As your implementation grows in size and maturity, you ll want a tool that simplifies and accelerates your adoption of agile. To help avoid the risk of long-term rework or failure, here s a list of the top 10 things to consider when selecting an enterprise agile tool. Agile Your Way Ease of Adoption Ability to Scale Project Visualization Strategic Planning Managing Complexity Reporting and Analytics Enterprise Collaboration 3rd Party Integration Deployment Flexibility

4 Agile Your Way No two agile implementations are the same. And no agile implementation ever remains the same. Over time your agile processes will scale and evolve and you ll need a tool that is flexible enough to adapt with you. Steer clear of any tool that tries to impose a pre-defined, one-size-fits-all approach (even if the vendor claims to know better than you) it will come back to haunt you. Customizable methodology templates and terminology to align with how you do agile Configurable workflows that allow you to adapt your processes as you evolve Project workspaces that let teams work the way they want within the context of your organization

5 Easy to Adopt Shelfware as a service is unfortunately alive and well in many organizations. You run the risk of jeopardizing your entire agile initiative if you choose a tool that a) teams don t like and b) doesn t fully support your agile processes from inception to delivery. Don t waste a year paying for a tool that will be left to gather (virtual) dust. Involve ALL of your key stakeholders in your evaluation and select a tool that will accelerate, not impede, your broader adoption of agile. Agile process-based navigation designed to accelerate adoption Simplified UI that reinforces agile best practices, making agile easier A tool that your teams actually like and will therefore use

6 Simple to Scale You might be starting out small with a few teams, but envision what it will be like when you ve implemented agile across your entire organization. As the number of projects and teams increases, you ll potentially have thousands of stories, defects, epics, and issues to keep track of. And with distributed teams in different locations and time zones, it will get very chaotic very quickly without a solution in place that can grow with you over time. All-in-one solution that supports the complete agile lifecycle from inception to delivery Project rollups, program support, and cross-project teams Rich reporting and analytics for visualizing status and progress at all levels of the organization

7 Project Visualization As your agile initiative grows, so too does the complexity of managing it. With so much project data flying around, it can be hard make sense of it all, especially when things keep changing. Sometimes you just can t see the forest for the trees. Whether it s tracking work items, understanding relationships and dependencies, or re-planning on the fly as business priorities change, you ll struggle to keep pace without a scalable enterprise agile tool to help you. Visual drag-and-drop epic, story, task, and test boards for simplified project tracking Timeline and dependency views that help you sequence work to prevent scheduling conflicts Relationship diagrams and hierarchical views that make it easier to understand how everything fits together

8 Strategic Planning When strategy and execution don t align the outcome is never good. Management decisions about the right business initiatives to focus on need to be closely aligned with the teams and projects needed to make it happen. Look for a tool that simplifies high-level planning and makes it easy to track the progress of your business initiatives. And make sure it helps you connect the dots between the portfolio, program and team levels to keep everyone focused on the top organizational priorities. Decision support capabilities for portfolio level planning based on business value and risk Kanban style epic boards for tracking and managing strategic initiatives through to completion Multi-level planning approach with the ability to break epics down into individual features, stories and tasks

9 Managing Complexity Sooner or later you ll reach a tipping point when managing multiple projects and teams will feel like it s spiraling out of control. How are you going to coordinate program delivery, track progress and report on overall status? How are you going to strike the balance between process consistency and letting your teams work the way they want? And what about cross-project teams? If it sounds complex it is unless you have the right tool in place to help you. Configurable project and program management to match your organizational structure with rollup reporting Flexibility to let teams work on a single project or multiple projects at the same time Ability to understand cross-project dependencies and visualize how stories are related See an Agile Demo

10 Reporting and Analytics Inadequate reporting can leave you in the dark when it comes to getting the visibility you need to monitor your projects and make fact-based decisions. You won t know upfront all the reports and metrics you ll want to track as you extend agile across your organization or what the business will ask for. With all the different stakeholders involved, the one thing you can be sure of is that you ll need complete flexibility to slice and dice your data in a way that makes the most sense for your organization. A wealth of best practice, pre-packaged agile metrics and reports to get you started Custom analytics that allow you to design your own dashboards and reports from scratch Direct access to your data so you can build that one-off report that someone s just gotta have

11 Enterprise Collaboration Collaboration and communication are essential to agile success, whether it s at the team-level, enterprise-wide or with customers. Yet with distributed teams, changing priorities, and accelerated delivery cycles, keeping everyone on the same page is more challenging than ever. Helping people and teams collaborate more effectively, regardless of location, needs to be front and center and not an afterthought. Team-level collaboration enabling rapid communication and decision making amongst team members Enterprise group collaboration capabilities to make timely, organizational collaboration easier Ability to engage directly with more of your customers and capture, collaborate on and prioritize feedback

12 3rd Party Integration There s not one tool out there that can do everything. Build out your internal ecosystem with tools that work well together, and integrate your agile management solution to create a unified environment. Watch out for proprietary integration platforms that limit what tools you can integrate with and hamper your ability to extend individual integrations to better suit your needs. Open, web-services API with.net and Java SDKs Pre-built connectors for leading commercial and open-source development tools Option to build, modify or extend connectors to align your unique internal business processes

13 Deployment Flexibility Don t let deployment options (or lack of) be a show stopper in selecting the right enterprise agile tool for your organization. Decide what makes the most sense to support your IT requirements software on-premise or in the cloud and make sure you re not locked into that choice if your needs change. Whether it s for peace of mind or corporate governance, you should be able to manage your software the way you want. Flexibility to choose the deployment approach that s right for your organization A solution architected from the ground up to support both SaaS and on-premise deployment Portability to start with one approach and easily transition to the other if your needs change

14 So there you have them. The 10 essentials for agile tooling. Agile Your Way Ease of Adoption Ability to Scale Project Visualization Strategic Planning Managing Complexity Reporting and Analytics Enterprise Collaboration 3rd Party Integration Deployment Flexibility Ready to align your tool with your vision? See an Agile Demo Ask An Agile Expert