Which Agile tool should you use?

After browsing through discussions on the Agile Alliance LinkedIn group this morning I came across a thread: Best SCRUM tools in the market. I posted a comment on this thread and thought it worthwhile expanding on this and sharing details of my analysis.

A while ago I did some detailed research into agile tools for managing distributed Scrum teams. There were 9 tools that I looked at in total evaluating each based on the following metrics: functionality, price, usability and scalability. For each of the tools I either created a test account or downloaded and installed a test version of the application. The top 3 tools that I came up with were : Target Process, Rally and JIRA with Greenhopper. Here is a detailed matrix containing my analysis:

* ping me your email address if you interested in the cost breakdown per user details and I will send through the full spreadsheet – andrew [at] thekeggies [dot] com:

full view

We decided to go with JIRA with Greenhopper and have been using it with our distributed teams for a couple years now…to good effect! It is an extremely affordable solution and does more than is necessary to enable teams to get things done. I have found that the Atlassian Greenhopper team listen closely to what their users are saying and have an aggressive approach product improvement and development which is encouraging. Here is some evidence.

Now don’t just dive into using an automated tool if you are just starting out with Scrum or any other Agile approach. If you have a collocated team, start off using a white board and stickies and automate once you are comfortable.

Greenhoppers latest release 5.2

A couple of months back I wrote a post on creating a cumulative flow diagram (CFD) using Greenhopper. Unfortunately the article didn’t provide readers with a solution to the problem, as I was unable to finish off the custom php script I was planning to use to generate the pivot of data required to create a CFD.

Thankfully the Greenhopper team had enough time to do it for me! The latest release of Greenhopper – 5.2 includes CFD’s as well a number of other changes which you can catch up on in the Release notes.

It was a great touch by the Greenhopper team to invite me to test the latest set of features prior to the launch. I was impressed that they took the time out to send me a personal email and invite my feedback – thanks!

In testing the latest release I realised I have been a little out of touch with progress made on JIRA over the past while. The tweaks made to the interface add a “minty freshness” to the user experience, which I like. There is a clear focus to developing the supporting agile widgets – great value to project managers who are looking for that little bit extra than competing products provide. I need more time to explore 5.2 further – so far so good though.

Greenhopper has great potential in the PM tool marketplace – with such competitive pricing and available functionality, it is hard to ignore. It still doesn’t provide you with multi project/programme reporting and analysis but what’s the bet that is planned for Release 6 – watch out!

Create a Cumulative Flow Diagram using Greenhopper

Note: I have since discovered that actually this does not produce a perfect cumulative flow diagram as the script doesn’t incorporate negative accumulation. Working on a php script which factors both positive and negative to give an accurate flow.

Ok so after much hunting around I have finally found a solution to creating a cumulative flow diagram using Greenhopper – albeit a workaround!

1) Download Toad for MySQL: http://www.quest.com/toad-for-mysql/

2) Connect to your JIRA Database

3) Use the following query to pull out accumulative totals – tweak parameters based on the project you are working on:

SELECT DATE_FORMAT(changegroup.CREATED, ‘%Y/%m/%d’) AS CountDate, changeitem.NEWSTRING, Count(changeitem.NEWSTRING) As Total
FROM changeitem
left outer JOIN changegroup
ON changeitem.groupid = changegroup.ID
left outer JOIN jiraissue
ON changegroup.issueid = jiraissue.ID
left outer JOIN projectversion
ON jiraissue.PROJECT = projectversion.PROJECT
WHERE jiraissue.PROJECT = ** Your Project ID**
AND changeitem.FIELD = ‘status’
AND projectversion.vname = ‘Release 1′
GROUP BY CountDate, changeitem.NEWSTRING
ORDER BY CountDate ASC

4) Export your result set into Excel and create a pivot table
5) Change the graph to type Area
6) Summaries your results by running total

See Example here