Mingle Supports Complete Application Lifecycle Management for One Of The World's Leading Research Institutions While substantially improving the quality of releases www.thoughtworks-studios.com
Executive Summary The European Molecular Biology Laboratory () is one of the world's leading research institutions in the field of molecular life sciences. has over the past 37 years fostered Nobel Prize-winning research excellence, and has provided innovative training, and vital services to students and scientists. When needed to update software used to manage applications from students worldwide, Mingle, ThoughtWorks Studios' Agile project management solution, empowered them with a flexible, easy-to-use shared space for their entire team to collaboratively deliver high-quality value. The Customer Since 1974, the, a non-profit organization publicly funded by 20 European member states and Australia has conducted innovative and notable research in the field of molecular biology. Many scientific breakthroughs have been made at, most notably the first systematic genetic analysis of embryonic development in the fruit fly that was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine in Leading research organization in the field of molecular biology. 1995. Its 1,400 employees from 60 nations represent varied scientific disciplines including biology, physics, chemistry, and computer science. The Challenge The information technology (IT) services department develops a wide range of web applications for services and training, such as managing students' applications, providing an overview of events at, alumni management, etc., primarily using the Java framework. Of these, the application and evaluation process of students from across the world seeking to obtain their post-doctorate or PhD degree with is central to attracting talent and maintaining the high standards of research pioneered by the organization. The team was counting on Agile responsiveness and collaboration mechanisms to keep up with changing requirements and regular updates to this application. With minimal requirements specifications of the existing code base, the team was finding it challenging to understand and enhance the application. In addition, with a large proportion of non-technical users on the team, the team required an Agile project management solution that would not be complex and rigid to use. The tool had to foster collaboration and facilitate requirements management while being flexible and easy to use. Mingle has been a very powerful addition to our project. It is not only a collaborative space for our team but the sole documentation repository of functional requirements and the de facto defect management tool for our applications. Nial Darbey Web Development Lead Copyright 2011 ThoughtWorks Inc. All rights reserved www.thoughtworks-studios.com
How did Mingle help? After doing some research on Agile management tools, I downloaded Mingle, tried it and was very pleased. It has a very clean, visual interface and demonstrated huge potential to manage requirements and defects effectively, says Nial Darbey, Web Development Lead,. The existing code base for the application did not have any documentation of the requirements, which made enhancing the application all the more confusing and difficult. With Mingle, it was pretty simple and intuitive to add user stories and requirements specifications. Thus it has become our projects' system of record. The offshoot of that is that we get a ready documentation repository that is especially valuable for all future application updates, continues Nial. Apart from requirements management and tracking, Mingle's visually-intensive user interface and ease-of-use led it to be widely adopted by the team at large for activities beyond project management, such as defect and test management. Mingle flexibly allows any project contruct to be a card type, and supports full customization of card properties. Thus we could configure defect and test card types and assign various relevant properties to them. We can then efficiently track these defects and tests with the same ease as requirements and stories. Moreover, as failing and passing tests are as easy as the click of a button, nontechnical users are able to manage tests and defects, says Nial. Mingle's out-of-the-box reporting mechanisms and macro support enables charts to be easily generated from any card property at the granularity the team chooses. Thus it provides the entire team with a relevant visual overview of the project. As results are realtime and graphical; issues, failed tests and unresolved defects can be optimally detected and resolved. Mingle helped our teams and users to release predictably and is helping us to achieve better management of the users expectations. Anne Hermelin IT Project Manager Virtual story wall: Accurate real-time visibility for the entire team Copyright 2011 2011 ThoughtWorks ThoughtWorks Inc. All rights Inc. reserved All rights www.thoughtworks-studios.com reserved www.thoughtworks-studios.com
The Results In the 2 years since the team started using Mingle, it has now grown to be used across 10 projects as a powerful solution for complete Application Lifecycle Management, from Agile project management, team collaboration, and requirements management to defect management. The emphasis on visual project management enables red flags to be appropriately highlighted and resolved before they propagate further through the delivery lifecycle. The entire team can collaborate on application delivery, as Mingle abstracts the technical jargon and complexity associated with project tools and provides a simple interface with high usability standards. Apart from being the central repository for all requirements documentation, Mingle is also the de facto defect management solution, with Bugzilla only being used for legacy defect management. Benefits of Mingle Requirements Management Agile Project Management Collaboration Defect and Test Management Mingle acts as the sole repository for all requirements documentation for over 10 projects. Mingle s visually intensive UI and graphical reports enable showstoppers to be highlighted in time and thus facilitate successful risk mitigation. 50% of Mingle users are non-technical business users who actively use Mingle to report results of acceptance tests and monitor the progress of development iterations. Mingle is critical to improving the quality prevents of the releases. It is used to manage tests and defects with the same ease as user stories and replaced Bugzilla for defect management. Mingle's benefits throughout the application lifecycle. The IT services department plans to continue to expand the use of Mingle to manage its array of web applications for its various services and training offerings. The team is also keen to exploit Mingle's usability and flexibility for non-it related projects. With regular feature enhancements to Mingle, most recently being Mingle 3.3 with improved access control, user management to manage user groups and project workflows, and integration with Go (ThoughtWorks Studios release management solution) Mingle continues to enable the team to get the most out of Agile Application Lifecycle Management. Mingle's reporting mechanisms and macro support enabled visual tracking of the project. The benefits of Mingle's reporting were immediate and valuable. At a glance we could tell the status and progress of the project. Showstoppers were highlighted in time and thus risks were mitigated successfully. Nial Darbey Web Development Lead Copyright 2011 ThoughtWorks Inc. All rights reserved www.thoughtworks-studios.com
About ThoughtWorks Studios ThoughtWorks Studios is a global leader in Agile software development tools, and its products can be found in development organizations seeking sustainable Agile adoption. The company's Adaptive Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) solution provides a platform for managing all aspects of software development, from requirements definition and project management to test automation, quality assurance, and release management. Adaptive ALM comprises the integration of three products: Mingle (Agile project management), Twist (Agile testing), and Go (Agile release management). Each tool is available as part of a complete lifecycle solution or as a standalone product. Backed by more than 17 years of experience in Agile delivery, ThoughtWorks Studios is the product division of ThoughtWorks Inc., a pioneer in Agile development. ThoughtWorks Studios has over 400 customers in more than 20 countries, including 3M, Honeywell, BBC, ebay, Barclays, Vodafone, McGraw-Hill, and Rackspace. The company headquarters is located in San Francisco and Bangalore, with offices in London and select cities in Europe, Asia, and Australia. For more information, visit www.thoughtworks-studios.com. Mingle, an Agile management and collaboration tool, provides a common workspace for all team members and an automated system of record for all projects. Mingle can adapt any existing workflow process and easily manages daily development activities. Offering true-to-life visibility in the entire development process for all stakeholders, Mingle helps development teams become more open and collaborative. Go is a solution for Agile release management, which enables businesses to release software on demand. Go improves collaboration between developers, testers, and operations and provides fast feedback on the production readiness of your software. Using Go, teams can model the delivery process, perform push-button deployments, and trace from deployments back to version control. Twist, an automated Agile testing solution, provides English-like constructs, making the testing process more productive for all team members. As applications grow in complexity, Twist helps to more easily maintain complex test suites. These suites keep pace with application development and are held as long-living assets. Mingle Benefits Easy-to-Use Interface Mingle's user interface recreates the card wall experience in an online environment. This shared space available to all team members provides visibility into the movement of work, from development through to deployment. Improved Collaboration With Mingle, development teams can work directly with business stakeholders throughout a project, from recording feature requirements in a story card to showing overall development progress. Managing their projects in Mingle allows team to show consistent and predictable product progress to business stakeholders. Engineering Best Practices Mingle reduces tedious tasks such as manually determining project status, which provides more time for each teams to focus on software delivery rather than the software tool. With this emphasis on production, teams more easily adopt engineering best practices. For further information or to request a demo, please call: +1 415-273-8499/1-877 624-8467 (NA, Business hours CST) +44(0)20-7497-4500 (EU, 9:00 am to 5:00 pm GMT) +91-80-43233732/+91-80-43233722 (APAC and Africa, 9:30 am-6:00 pm IST 4:00 am-12:30 pm GMT) Email: studios@thoughtworks.com ThoughtWorks Studios CALL: 512-467-4956 (sales) 415-238-6497 (main) North America +91 80-4064-9703 Rest of the world EMAIL: studios@thoughtworks.com WEB: www.thoughtworks-studios.com SAN FRANCISCO CHICAGO LONDON BANGALORE BEIJING MELBOURNE Copyright 2011 2011 ThoughtWorks ThoughtWorks Inc. All rights Inc. reserved All rights www.thoughtworks-studios.com reserved www.thoughtworks-studios.com