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Closed 10 years ago.
We user JIRA for bug tracking and release management and we have started using greenhopper for project management inside of JIRA but one thing that it lacks is the idea of user stories versus tasks in those users stories. Does anyone recommend other task board like agile project management tools that fully support users stories and tasks as well as being fast and simple to user. I started looking at targetprocess so if anyone has feedback on that specifically it would be great as well.
TargetProcess is the least intrusive project mgmt tool I've used.
A common anti-pattern for Scrum and XP teams is to break stories down into tasks, track those tasks, and at the end of the iteration notice that all tasks are done, but the user stories aren't (because they are more than just the sum of their tasks).
I highly recommend not tracking tasks at all. Brainstorm them for estimation, if you like, but always estimate and track whole stories. If a story is to big, break it down into smaller stories - that sometimes takes some creativity, but it's almost always possible.
You can use sub-issues in Jira to aggregate stories into bigger stories, although this isn't very well supported by greenhopper, as far as I remember. If your team is colocated, I would very highly recommend index cards on a white board, anyway - even additionally to Jira, if you have to (that's how we currently work).
Whiteboard and sticky notes or note cards.
I know you asked for software, but depending on your environment it might be hard to beat the communication value of a publicly visible task chart.
But if you must have software there's also Rally and VersionOne.
My company have been using TargetProcess for a while and we are very pleased with the product. Whenever we have experienced problems or bugs, we have reported it to them and the problem or bug is solved really fast. It's a great tool that worked well with SCRUM. I really recommend it.
Acunote is the best one I've found to-date. Really easy, simple and quick to use.
We use Jira with GreenHopper with no problems. If you have control over the configuration of your Jira instance, you can easily create a story issue type that allows having sub-tasks. During the planning phase, we drop the stories onto the next version, and split them into sub-tasks, estimated in more precise time and assigned to team members. If those tasks are separate you can also convert them into sub-tasks of a specific story.
Thoughtworks would be happy to sell you Mingle
Take a look at http://AgileZen.com/
take a look at jazz: http://www.theserverside.com/news/thread.tss?thread_id=44577, http://jazz.net/pub/index.jsp
We've just released a brand-new tool called Crew which might work for you. It's very flexible and allows you to set up a project structure and workflow that fits your process.
http://www.devmynd.com/crew
Related
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Closed 9 years ago.
I'm a developer and need to collaborate with an UI designer and a project manager. so there are a lot of documents we need to share and the project manager will assign me tasks about the project. Instead of email and dropbox, what's the best way to do it?
You could look at varying other online collaboration tools out there. I use Clinked (http://clinked.com/) at work, and although we use a the paid version there is a free one for 5 users or less so maybe you could check that out?
My team and I have been using Wrike for almost a year now, and I have to say it’s pretty neat in terms of collaboration. We have to deal with lots of documentation and edit-approve iterations, and Wrike made it all really simple. Basically, each member of the team just opens a needed doc, edits it, saves, and it’s automatically uploaded as a new version, so no download and no multiple versions of the same doc. And every time there’s been a change it sends a notification to my e-mail, so it’s really easy to keep track on what’s going on with a task. It’s also integrated with Google docs, so you can choose whatever suits your needs better. I, personally, love its e-mail integration (it converts my e-mails into tasks, I just need to add Wrike into the e-mail’s CC and it will be transferred into the app) and Outlook add-in, as it helps to keep all our data in one place. It works perfectly for our task management needs, too. Especially with its Activity Stream that makes it really easy to stay updated with the tasks’ changes and discuss any coming issue.
Hope you’ll find it useful too! Let me know how it went afterwards.
You might find this list of 43 project management software alternatives useful:
http://blog.timedoctor.com/2011/02/02/43-project-management-software-alternatives
My personal favorites are Basecamp, Time Doctor and Dropbox. These programs have helped my team in a lot of ways especially productivity. I'm sure you'll find yours there too. It's the most helpful and comprehensive list I was able to get.
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Closed 9 years ago.
I have been working with managing agile teams for quite some time. Now I'm at a company that no matter how hard I push for the fact that face-to-face is the way to go and that excel sheets works to get us going. But the company sees the "burn-down-chart in a webpage" as the main focus. They actually see that and the ability to see and follow the backlog online as the most important thing and we basically can't get going before this is in place. The people involved are actually not that many and they are not spread across multiple offices so I really can't see the need.
But I have decided to stop driving myself crazy about this and just bite the bullet.
So I started looking around and gave Pivotal Tracker, Banana Scrum and a few other a try. A mix of them all would probably be my best fit but given the criteria bellow, which would suite me best? I have searched StackOverflow and read up on a few recommendations before posting, but none of them actually fitted all my needs. The MAIN issue is to give people an indication of the workload and future work-load of the dept, but if we are going to start using a management tool it might as well fill a few other requests.
Ability to run it on an in-house
server (since a lot of the systems it should integrate with are not public on the net)
Ability to integrate it with
Bugzilla, preferably two-way
Ability for external
applications (such as websites) to
fetch data about backlog and
bunrdown-chart
Ability to handle
cross-functional teams (ie we might
only have one person on a team with a
given ability. Before I used to
handle this manually to avoid over allocating this person in a sprint, but if others
are to be able to fiddle with the
backlog this should preferably be
automatically indicated)
Ability to print index cards
Virtual white-board
Ability to set up automatic reports to be mailed
Long term indication coarse-grained (correct name?) estimation of features done and short term fine grained estimation
UPDATE: Open-Source would be preferable. Jira is nice, but licensing is quite expensive
UPDATE 2012-01-03: I would like to tip about Backlogs for Redmine which adds Scrum facilities to Redmine in a acceptable manner.
JIRA with the GreenHopper plug-in provides most of what you want. As you say, it's not free, but the licensing costs are reasonable. Twenty dollars to get started with 10 users is a sweet deal.
I've used GreenHopper for a few years. We tried Excel spreadsheets beforehand; they sucked. The problem requires a database and better visualization.
On request, we printed off JIRA task cards for a physical taskboard for a few months. But that was silly -- DRY. A projector in the standup room is all you need. Optionally, you can filter tasks to focus on those team member in turn.
Ability to run it on an in-house server (since a lot of the systems it should integrate with are not public on the net)
Yes.
Ability to integrate it with Bugzilla, preferably two-way
Last I checked, it could import Bugzilla issues.
Ability for external applications (such as websites) to fetch data about backlog and bunrdown-chart
Jelly scripts and JQL might help here.
Ability to handle cross-functional teams (ie we might only have one person on a team with a given ability. Before I used to handle this manually to avoid over allocating this person in a sprint, but if others are to be able to fiddle with the backlog this should preferably be automaticly indicated)
Not sure what you're looking for here. You can create custom groups of users. In the basic system, the only indication of over-allocation is a user's total number of hours in a sprint.
Ability to print index cards
We did this. There's a "Print Cards" menu item.
Virtual white-board
There's a task board. No arbitrary drawing surface.
Ability to set up automatic reports to be mailed
Yes, with very fine control of who gets sent what in response to what events. There are several mechanisms, configurable by either administrators, project administrators, or users.
Long term indication coarse-grained (correct name?.. hehe) estimation of features done and short term fine grained estimation
There's an hour-based burndown chart for the short-term of the next sprint, and an issue-based burndown for the long-term.
Pivotal Tracker is a great tool. Unfortunately it's now going paid (not free anymore). Other tools that are pretty solid include: Rally, Version One, Jira (with Greenhopper), AgileZen, AgileBuddy, TinyPM, Aldon Agile Manager, Agile Bench, Scrum Desk, Scrum Ninja to name a few.
Agile tools are being built by the boat load. You may never find the "perfect tool." Period.
I do suggest that you start with a whiteboard, tape, and stickies. At the end of the day, wallboards are KING for Agile.
On my last project I used Pivotal Tracker which was very slick, though you have to accept that it's Pivotal's way or the highway :) Although its no longer free, it is cheap. I haven't tried Mingle, though I hear some good things about it if you're willing to put in the configuration effort, similar to Greenhopper, which is what we've just shifted to using internally.
#Jody - I don't find Jira to be overkill for small teams if you configure it minimally. Even so I can sympathise that Jira/Greenhopper don't 'just work' out of the box, and something like Pivotal Tracker or 37signals BaseCamp may be a better fit.
If you are interested in open source tools, I would suggest to look at the Scrum Open Source Tools Directory But if cost is a problem and you don't have many people in your project, a lot of commercial tools like TinyPM offer free version of their tools for small teams (5 persons in their case I believe)
I used 37 signals' basecamp with much success. I combined this with a 3rd party burndown chart - http://www.burndowngraph.com/.
I managed the backlog offline in a spreadsheet or as a single todo list in the project. Though you could use 2 basecamp projects. One for the current sprint, and one for the backlog. Each Story becomes a todo list, and each task is ...well, a todo item. Hour estimations for tasks go at the end of a todo item in the form "1h" or "1d" or whatever.
The sum of all todo's is your sprint backlog & taskboard in one.
For your integration concerns, they have a wonderful API that lets you do just about anything you want.
It won't print index cards, but if you really need them there's always the API.
Automatic reports, hmmm. I don't think so, but if people are genuinely interested, they should check the project page for updates.
Not sure it would help you with the cross functional team thing, but maybe I don't exactly understand the problem there.
I think that covered all your points (not that basecamp can, but it's close)
It really sounds like you are trying to use this tool to appease management, but still do things your way. Whatever tool you pick won't be completely successful until you and the team embrace it as well.
Best of luck. BTW, I find greenhopper and jira to be complete overkill for small teams.
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Closed 11 years ago.
How has the current economic downturn affected the way you/your team works ?
I am tending to do more enhancements, compared to brand new development a year or so ago.
This question came about during another pub conversation where we were discussing if it's good to work on supporting applications or working on new projects - which is more stable, for the foreseeable future, with companies cost cutting in all areas..
I mainly work on extending existing applications. I would say this is probably the safer of the two options also. More than likely people are already using the existing applications, and because of that you don't need to convince them it would be advantageous for them to start using it. From a business perspective, it is a lot easier to justify an expense than you already have than to try and add an additional one.
Number 3: rewriting existing apps (the guy who used to do my job suuuuccccckkkked).
Definitely seeing a downturn in large scale or new projects in general though, which is kind of the programming equivalent of saving not spending. Actually it's the literal equivalent of that, which is a problem for getting out of a recession.
Good question. I am at present working with project that has good customers and a decent revenue. So, the economic downturn did not affect much.
My suggestion is if there is a choice between choosing enhancing the existing projects or new projects, its better to go for the revenue generating existing projects. And investment in R&D projects may be reduced.
I believe "supporting" and bug-fixing on existing projects would not bring your much challenge and consequently experience. It can be a huge time waste for the career.
I am working on porting an existing business application to a new platform, which combines some of the aspects of work on an existing app, and some new stuff.
Its new because everything is going from Windows Forms to ASP.NET AJAX, and there are several changes involved in that process when it comes to the GUI and event based side of things, but its also partially work with existing stuff because the business rules are the same, the database is the same, although we have been gradually making improvements as needed to those.
On the other hand the company I work for supplies grocery stores which have been affected positively by more people eating at home, so despite being in Michigan, things are going well for the company, and we can afford to move this app onto the intranet.
The nice part about doing this is I get to learn all the new platform stuff, but we don't have to go out and get user input for some new set of use cases, plus we can work with the input we've received from the WinForms version.
I'm rewriting our existing applications. The fundamental design of the original applications wasn't flexible enough to handle our new business needs. Combined with questionable coding practices (a lack of separation of model, view and control and aging technologies with a lot of "NIH" syndrome) it was decided that rewriting the non-central portions of our applications was best.
Sadly, I'm not entirely sure I'm 100% qualified for this, but, I seem to be the most qualified of our team.
90% of my job is maintenance, or seems to be. But surprisingly, I've got about four projects of new development going or in the pipeline.
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Closed 10 years ago.
When you first fire up Visual Studio, or even before that (Hopefully)
What do you consider best practices when starting a new project?
Different things I have done in the past
Consider the technology choices
Attempt to identify the potential bottlenecks/brickwalls
Throw away the specification
Ask lots and lots of questions
Launched straight into code! (who hasn't?)
As programmers we should be methodical in our approach.
What do you do when starting a new project?
Start using version control right away.
It is always frustrating building prototype "throwaway code" that eventually gets thrown away - and then realizing that some of that code would be really really useful to have.
(If applicable) Figure out whether you are building a throwaway prototype, an expandable prototype, or a final production system.
I think that a major problem with a lot of projects is that people don't get this one figured out to begin with. They either over-engineer and the project doesn't deliver on time, or they write throwaway code that later becomes too expensive to throw away.
I do the following when building for others. WHen I build myself using more agile dev concepts, I still cycle through these steps. It makes it very easy to involve others as well.
Analyze: What do we need to do and why. Aka feature spec.
Design: what are we going to build, how will it work, and why? aka. Technical Spec.
Plan: What and who do we need, when, to do what
Implement: Build, test, repeat.
Launch: Almost there.
Support/Document/Train, etc: In case you get hit by a bus, or someone arranges for it.
Scrum
++
Requirements Gathering
Scope
Out of Scope
Pick Platform to deliver on and appropriate Development Environment
Calculate Expenses, Make budget
Schedule
Review at each stage and educate the end user of what is being made throughout
easy tips
Create my first test project.
One main thing I always like to know is, who exactly is doing what! even from the starting point. Stops alot of time being lost.
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Closed 10 years ago.
I are working in a small development team of 4 people.
We are trying develop "Agile style" - story points, small tasks, etc...
Unfortunately, we are currently managing our tasks in a (shared) excel table.
We looked at some available tools (Mingle, TFS, Scrum for Team System), but all of these looked like they would be too much overhead and take the fun out of working.
What are you Agile lovers using for tracking your tasks over long period of time?
Update
The current top answer is not really an answer to what I intended to ask - I need some tool to help me find out, over the long run, which features & tasks I estimated correctly, and where did I go horribly wrong. I see how a whiteboard/all of post-its help with managing the current or previous iterations, but I don't see myself searching for a post-it from 2 months ago.
Update Response: It doesn't seem imprortant to track WHAT was underestimated as much as WHY it was underestimated. This is something addressed at the iteration retrospective. If there are impediments, they should be addressed early and resolved. If you're looking to address something more specific than just seeing a task in the past that was undersetimated, you should ask about that.
A whiteboard, index cards and sharpies.
Just use Trac. It has everything you need for a small project. You could use the ticketing system to distribute the tasks (in Agile you should think in terms of stories and not individual tasks anyway) but if it's not enough you could get extra plugins for time management etc.
We're using Xplanner right now, with pretty good results.
Write them out on labels and stick them up on a board - it works :) Also Scrum really does not give you overhead - it works pretty well and is very satisfying for all team members imho :)
Here we use Trac for one project and #Task for another.
At another company, we used Excel sheets with each person's tasks, printed and pinned to the wall.
In general, most forms of actually planning, documenting, and tracking tasks is going to take the fun out of working... But it is completely necessary to stay sane.
I really like JIRA and the GreenHopper plugin looks to add some nice features.
"We looked at some available tools (Mingle, TFS, Scrum for Team System), but all of these looked like they would be too much overhead and take the fun out of working."
I can only suggest you give Mingle a real trial, it's amazing. My developers love it and so do I.
There is a small learning curve but it's so flexible, I'd suggest looking at the Hybrid sample project and the built-in reports to get over any reservations you may have.
Our project would be dead in the water if it wasn't for Mingle, I have a disability but can still modify 300+ cards in a day if required. Plus it's free for a year for 5 users or less!
Post-its cannot possibly facilitate the communication and teamwork that this software provides out of the box, and if you don't like the way it works you can keep tweaking it till it suits your team.
Hardware - I'd suggest a quad core & 8GB for decent performance.
Disclosure: I have no association with Thoughtworks, other than loving their s/ware.
Index cards work great, but if you need it online, I'd try Unfuddle. You can use it for small groups for free, and it's lightweight enough that you can adjust it to your group's needs pretty easily.
I use it at work, and we keep all stories in its "notebooks" (read: wikis) and tasks in its tasking system. It has built in milestones and releases, and its Subversion and Git integration are pretty great: we can log comments on and resolve tasks with version control messages.
We're using ScrumWorks for about 30 people. They have a free edition.
http://danube.com/scrumworks
I like Pivotal Tracker. It's a story-based project planning tool that allows teams to collaborate in real-time
Rally is a really nice tool that is focused around Agile development.
I like dotProject for actual task tracking. You can easily attack the database to get your on statistical data out of it if needen.
For the planning proces I use Microsoft Project mainly because I'm used to it. I also used the open source tool OpenProj.
Changing tasks in dotProject is painful, so I usually enter them only about 4 to 6 weeks in advance.
FogBuz seems to be a great tool, I just never had the time to try it out and am realla a late adopter of such tools.
This question is mostly a duplicate of https://stackoverflow.com/questions/12328/what-bug-tracking-software-do-you-use which has a lot of answers - tasks are not necessarily bugs, but good tools let you specify other task types than 'bug'.
We're using Eventum at the moment to handle our tasks. It may not be the best but it's worth taking a look at. Each "issue" in our case is often broken down features or use cases that is assigned to someone to implement.
We also use Trac, but it does not scale very well. Handling Use Cases and Test Cases may also get cumbersome. It really depends on the scope of the project and the size of the development team. I think for teams with less than 10 people Trac does an excellent job, but after that you are hitting the glass ceiling.
We are starting to take a closer look at Confluence/Jira (perhaps with Greenhopper) as we are starting to outgrow Trac.
Oh, and post its, index cards and whiteboards work really well if everybody is on-site ;-)
RallyDev.com. Free 5-user community edition and it's actually pretty good!
For a co-located team nothing beats a big wall and a whole bunch of index cards as far as I'm concerned. Maybe with whiteboard or two for burnup/down charts.
We are a team spread across multiple locations. The tool I've found useful has been a wiki built over Twiki.
Benefits:
Wiki-like environment so collaboration is easy.
Plugins available to add 'applications' such as minutes of meetings, Bulletin Boards,
Discussion Forums.
Secure.
Check out Intervals. We built it as a web design agency with very similar issues as yours. We hadd 4 or 5 guys all tracking time and tasks in xcel documents and it was difficult to get anything done.
I the agile teams I work with, we dont manage task over a long period of time. Instead, we manage a "backlog" of features to be added to the product. We sometime also call those "user stories". This backlog is a kind of slicing of the product in a list of incremental features to be delivered. We manage this backlog in Excel, with very few columns such as description, complexity evaluation and done/not done, iteration, and that's it.
During the iteration, the tasks are managed in a postit wall as presented in one of the answers. In case a task last more than one iteration, we manage to fragment it, ensuring features/user stories are delivered at each iteration.
An example of user story in the excel backlog, it would have complexity associated with it:
"The user can log on the system using a form with id and password"
Some examples of associated tasks, to be done during an iteration. Those will be managed with postit, with not complexity.
"Code the logging form, using GWT"
"Implement security algorithm to check password validity"
"Create a user/password table in the database"
"Test the logging form on the integration system"
We've been using Accunote (accunote.com). A vendor set it up so I have no idea what it costs, or even if we are sing it properly.
Why it works:
Fairly easy to edit/update.
Easy to modifiy tasks in sprint, copy to/from backlog tab, etc.
Everyone looks at the burndown charts, especially the "by user" one, and that keeps the team working together and gives a sense of accomplishment.
There's probably other tools that do the same, or better (and the Accunote Javascript can be a bit awkward).
Key thing is that it should be really easy to use and have some sort of "team space" where you can all keep an eye on each other and see how each of you are going.