Agile development tools have been created to offer solutions to organizations which would otherwise crumble with the heavy weight of project management. They promote growth, enhance teamwork, collaboration and process adaptability.The tools are tailored in form of tools boxes which operates for a limited period of time and involving a variety of processes.
Agile provides an adaptive module that is tailored to fit in the existing apparatus other than being predictive where it may be used to feature on the forecasts of the program in question. Despite facing competition from giant software manufacturers, agile continues to be a leader in provision of project management tools that have proven to be effective and widely used.
Tools Tailored For Any Scope of Project
As organizations are different, so are the projects they undertake. This means that each and every project comes with its own share of requirements that may not be similar to any other project undertaken by the organization or the same project in a different organization.
It is for this reason that Agile products are available in a wide variety to ensure that irrespective of the scope of project you are undertaking you get an efficient tool to use. Agile development tools come configured to ensure that whatever project in the offing there is an effective too to see it through.
Agile Development Tools Compared
Though there are many agile tools which you can use for your projects here is a number of them which are available in the market.
Easy backlog is a simple easy to use tool for scrum because it is web based and used to create projects. The projects are then filled with stories, plan sprints and track progress through a burn down chart. This tool rates highest in performance but low on functionality.
Ice scrum is a tool for active development. It is created with nice concepts where planning poker power is used. It is essential for estimations and has installed filters for this purpose. It rates highly on performance and usability but a bit lower on usability.
Agilefant is among the most recent releases of the agile tools. It is fitted with rich features that allows for creation of products, projects, iterations and user stories for each and every project. This tool rates the highest among the agilo tools in functionality, usability and performance.
Agilo is one of the complicated tools from agile. Built under active development, it includes features like the burn down charts, dashboard, and integrated wiki. The tool is rate low on usability but ranks higher on performance and functionality.
SeeNowDo is also a powerful agile tool to look into. It has an acceptable permission control and good for use in Scrum projects. Despite being rated highly in its usability, it is generally slow hence rated low on performance. However, unlike the others the tool has no projects.
There are other tools which owing to a number of reasons have ceased to be developed and they include the XPlanner, XPStoryStudio and XPWeb among others.
Examples of Agile Tools Used in Project Management
Atlassian’s Jira is a popular tools used to track product development. It allows the development team to organize issues, assign work and as well enable team members to follow up on the project development. It is enhanced with feature which includes development of user stories, building of sprint backlogs abd visualization of team activities.
Axosoft Ontime Scrum is a HTML-5 based creation that enables the development team to manage backlogs, releases and sprints. Its enhanced features include the burndown charts and management dashboard. It also tracks the time spent coding features and fixing bugs.
LeanKit is a cloud based whiteboard metaphor that is used by organization to to map organization processes. It operates on cards which represents work items and provides status updates. It enables the team members to see workload distribution and as well export historical data.
Advantages of Using Agile Tools
Development of project management tools dates back to 1974. Over the years efforts have been made to ensure more and user friendly tools are available for users. Agile tools have been built on this platform and have the capacity to ensure an effective project management is available for use.
In any project undertaking, communication is essential, it is for this reason that agile development tools are built with an information radiator. This is essential in providing updates on the development status in course of the project. This means that each and every member of the team has a chance to access and know any updates that occurs within the project. The tools are also made of to offer high quality services. This is ensured through adequate testing measures done by the program developers and as such ensuring that when adopting the organization does not waster more time in wasting but takes full advantage of its features to enhance performance.
Most of the tools are built with a scrum. This is tailored to offer a platform where team members meet and disseminate information regarding the project. These are organized to take place regularly hence ensuring there are updates on project progress as well as offering a chance to address any hindrances that may have occurred in the process.
Disadvantages of Using Agile Tools
Agile has been in the market for long. It is however the company’s policy that once adopted, the tools are under the organizations hands and as such the staff or the team using the tools has to learn its way through in using it. This more often result in wastage of time as team members focus on learning the concepts other that on working on the project at hand. However with the correct management team in the organization this can be averted by encouraging the team members to focus more on the sprint other than spending much time of the tool documentation. On major projects, agile products are also deemed to be in effective to some extent. This is more so for sequential projects where a hybrid system can be put into use.
Conclusion
For an effective project to be accomplished there must be right tools in place. Agile development tools come with multiple capabilities that allows for an effective project design and implementation. When put into effect, agile development tools enables the project team to make appropriate choices and decisions which effectively ensures that the intentions of the project are achieved considerably.
