Agile Tool Selection
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The document discusses the process used by an Agile team at John Deere's Intelligent Solutions Group to select an Agile management tool. The team used the Analytical Hierarchy Process to identify criteria, alternatives, weight criteria based on pairwise comparisons, score alternatives, and recommend Rally as the strongest candidate tool based on its strengths in planning, tracking, story definition, development integration, quality assurance and infrastructure operations.
Agile Tool Selection
- 1. What tools do you use for Large Scale Agile?
- 2. 2Tool Need IdentifiedBackgroundMultiple Agile tracking tools used by early Agile teams
- 3. ISG transition to Agile beginning Sep 22nd, 2010NeedsNeed to have an Agile management tool for new Agile teams to use
- 4. Need to be able to roll-up product status across ISG product linesDecision SpaceThe full ALM tool space is shown at left
- 5. This tool decision was focused on the highlighted areas
- 6. It is assumed that Documentation Management and Software Development will be handled externally to the toolAgile Tool Team CompositionGoals
- 7. Include at least one member from each team already doing Agile in ISG
- 8. Include at least one member from each Agile role (scrum master, product owner, developer, tester)
- 9. Keep team to a manageable a size
- 10. TeamDecision Analysis ProcessThe team elected to use the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) to conduct the decision analysis. This uses the following method to reach a decision.Identify decision criteria Identify alternativesDo pairwise comparisons between the criteria in order to determine the relative weight of eachFor each criteria, do pairwise comparisons of all alternatives to get the criteria score for each alternativeSummarize criteria contributions for each alternativeThe alternative with the highest score is the recommendation
- 11. Identification of Candidate ToolsGoals
- 12. Review all Agile tools currently in use within ISG
- 14. Candidates
- 16. Jira (Atlassian)
- 17. Team Foundation Server (Microsoft)
- 21. Tool NeedsThe team identified the five categories of needs shown below. Each category is further broken into individual criteria in the following pages.Planning and Tracking
- 22. Story Definition
- 26. Planning and Tracking CriteriaThe Planning & Tracking criteria focus on how scrum masters, product owners, and managers plan future work and track the current status of development. CriteriaAgile Project Management
- 27. Agile Reports
- 30. Story, Task, and Kanban Boards*See notes section for details8Planning &TrackingStory DefinitionDevelopmentIntegrationQualityAssuranceInfrastructureOperations
- 31. Story Definition CriteriaThe Story Definition criteria focus on how product managers and owners enter the details of work to be completed for the coming iterations.CriteriaStory Capture
- 33. Attachments
- 34. Tasks/Sub Tasks
- 35. UI Spec*See notes section for details9Planning &TrackingStory DefinitionDevelopmentIntegrationQualityAssuranceInfrastructureOperations
- 36. Development Integration CriteriaThe Development Integration criteria describe how well the candidate tool integrates with other tools commonly used for application development.CriteriaIDE Integrations
- 37. Open API
- 38. Source Control
- 39. Integration Across Functional Subsystems*See notes section for details10Planning &TrackingStory DefinitionDevelopmentIntegrationQualityAssuranceInfrastructureOperations
- 40. Quality Assurance CriteriaThe Quality Assurance criteria detail how the testers manage defects and planned tests.CriteriaDefect & Defect Suite Management
- 42. Integration with Quality Center
- 43. Manual Test Management*See notes section for details11Planning &TrackingStory DefinitionDevelopmentIntegrationQualityAssuranceInfrastructureOperations
- 44. Infrastructure Operations CriteriaThe Infrastructure Operations criteria focus on how the tool is brought in and maintained within the organization.CriteriaCost
- 45. Availability
- 46. Hosting Options
- 47. Configurations
- 48. Intangibles*See notes section for details12Planning &TrackingStory DefinitionDevelopmentIntegrationQualityAssuranceInfrastructureOperations
- 50. Criteria Weighting By Category14Infrastructure OperationsPlanning & TrackingQuality AssuranceDevelopment IntegrationStory Definition
- 51. Candidate Tool AnalysisQuality CenterPros
- 52. Already used widely within IVS
- 53. Very strong test and defect functionality
- 54. Cons
- 55. Very poor Agile UI (planning, stories, tasks, status)
- 56. Limited Agile functionality (boards, reports, resource planning)
- 58. Good implementation of common Agile items
- 59. Very strong development integration tools
- 60. Cons
- 61. Fair Agile UI (planning, stories, tasks, status)15
- 62. Candidate Tool Analysis (cont)Team Foundation ServerPros
- 64. Acceptable implementation of common Agile items
- 65. Cons
- 66. Only integrated with Microsoft development tools
- 67. Did not provide good method for non-developers to access Agile informationDevSuitePros
- 69. Used in other Deere factories
- 70. Cons
- 71. Very fragmented UI requires use of 4 separate tools to track Agile development
- 72. Somewhat limited Agile functionality (poor taskboards, prioritization, test plans)16
- 73. Candidate Tool Analysis (cont)17RallyPros
- 74. Very strong Agile UI implementation
- 75. Included all targeted Agile functionality needs
- 76. Cons
- 77. Only fair support for development integrationVersionOnePros
- 78. Strong Agile UI implementation
- 79. Included nearly all targeted Agile functionality needs
- 80. Cons
- 81. Less intuitive story hierarchy
- 82. Less functional test cases Final Scoring Results18
- 83. Final Score Contributions By Category19
- 84. ConclusionsAs the team reviewed tools, it became apparent that the tools built to do Agile from the ground up provided better functionality and user interface than those tools that added Agile to existing functionality.
- 85. The team feels confident in the decision result that identifies Rally as the strongest candidate. Rally demonstrated strength in all targeted areas of Agile functionality and proved to be the quickest tool to both learn and use.20
- 86. Chad “Agile Ninja” Holdorfwww.scaledagiledelivery.comHi, my name is Chad Holdorf and I call myself the Agile Ninja because I hate being called a Process Pro. The reason I hate the title Process Pro is because I love delivering products. In 2008 I was asked to lead a team in the development of a software project using Agile. My response was, “WHAT?!?!” Today I’m proud to say I am all in on Agile | Lean Methodologies and teach it every day.I work for a John Deere Intelligent Solutions Group in Des Moines, IA as an Scaled Agile Coach. I’m not sure that is the right title, but my role is to roll out and support Agile at all locations.The challenges I blog/tweet/talk about are related to how John Deere is tailed around hardware and waterfall processes. This drives me bonkers when we try to make are software follow a hardware process!I’ve been applying Agile practices since Feb08. As an Agile Coach, I orchestrated the first large-scale Agile transformation within the company. This project included over 200 people and 30+ managers and was initiated, successfully, just four months prior to a critical product launch. I specializing in organizational change, optimization, efficiency and business value delivery, I make organizations better. Today 600+ people are practicing what I call “Scaled Agile Delivery Methodology” within John Deere.It’s never been a better time to be a part of John Deere and we are going places in the world of software development! If you want to join Deere, you can see the job listings here.
Editor's Notes
- #9: Agile Project ManagementTracking release and sprint statusRelease planningAssigning tasks to resourcesLinking defects, stories, tasks, acc criteriaAgile ReportsAre the reports adaquate to get the information needed?Are the reports easy to read and generate?Can a SRS-style report be generated? If so, is it readable?Hierarchical Stories/Projects/Roll-UpCan multiple levels of stories be created?Can multiple levels of projects be created?Can reporting be done for any level of project in the roll-up?Can the tool display a tree structure that can be easily expanded and contracted?Multi-Team Program ManagementAbility to track multiple teams on the same project.Flexibility for moving folks from one team to another.Story, Task, and Kanban BoardsAbility to see a story board, a task board, and a kanban board.
- #10: Story CaptureSearch abilitiesRanking?rich textLink to test plan tied to this storyCustom fieldsTagsAdd a new branch?LongevityArchivingAcceptance Criteriacreate, edit, etc versioning?ownership?linking?pass/fail tracking?tie to automation?Attachmentsattachments internal?attachments linking to external files (hyperlink)?embedded photos/images?search attachments?change history/versioning?Tasks/Sub Taskscreate, edit, etchoursestimatedremainingtotaltie to storyassigned tostate trackingUI SpecAttachment only vs integrated Demand 1 - mock upDemand 2 - wireframe/low fidelity
- #11: IDE IntegrationsHow many IDE's does the tool integrate with, and what is the quality of the integration?Open APIDoes the tool provide a method to read and write data to it so that custom integrations can be written if needed?Source ControlWhat are the capabilities for tie/link to source code controlIntegration Across Functional SubsystemsIntegration between major componentsMajor components being:- issues/defects- source control- continuous integration (& automated test)- manual tests (& manual test management)- IDEEase of workflow between the tools
- #12: Defect & Defect Suite ManagementHow effectively are defects tracked in the system?Can they be tied to stories?Can they be tied to a Screen?Automated Test ManagementAutomation of testsDevelopment side of QAFunctional testsIntegration with Quality CenterCan the tool integrate with QC if we decide to continue to use it for defects and test plansManual Test ManagementCan test cases be created in the tool?Can they be tied to stories?Can the results of the test be recorded and tracked?
- #13: Cost Tool costHosting costLicense structure/countsAvailabilityUptime metrics acceptable?Hosting OptionsInternal and externalUpgradabilityConfigurationsUser access/setupTailor projects/custom fieldsAdmin optionsIntangiblesCoaches vs ToolsOverall look and feelLearning curveHelp