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PMToolForAgileProjects

We talked about tools appropriate for projects with single co-located teams vs a distributed team vs multiple teams co-located or distributed.

Ideal tool (that takes advantage of in-person interaction) for a co-located team comprises of:

1. Sprint backlog on a physical board with stories and tasks on stickies or cards.
2. Burndown chart on white board manually drawn
3. Product backlog on a physical board with story cards/stickies
4. Impediments on white-board or flip chart
5. build status indicator like lava lamp, ambient orb

This encourages rich interaction among team members.

For a distributed team or for a project with multiple teams, software tool becomes necessary. Everybody seems to prefer tools that simulate the card view of a physical board. When it comes to configuration, there are two clear preferences. Some like minimal configuration, when others want to be able to configure everything. However, a tool that does things that are common across teams are better than the ones that try to do everything. The later can get in the way.

When is a software tool useful for a co-located team?

1. Product backlog management. Physical board is limited in ways product owners need to prioritize, group, and track relationship among features being built.

2. Change histories. Software tools allow teams to track changes to story/bug/task cards. It helps the team avoid confusions or misunderstanding.

3. Managing conversations around a story. One-on-one or group conversations about stories are great, but when developers are in the weeds, they tend to forget the details of the conversation. These conversations can be recorded in a software tool for later references.

4. Trend analysis. Software tools can make it easy to track key metrics and generate insights that otherwise would be difficult to produce manually.

In conclusion, a team, co-located or otherwise, should start with a low-tech solution like physical board or online spreadsheet, and eventually need to to move to a software-based solution, which can be complemented by a physical board if so desired.

Created by srayhan. Last Modification: Wednesday, 07 of April, 2010 18:39:54 CEST by srayhan.