Core features required for an Agile project management app

Question

Hi,

Can you agile gurus go through at a high level, what features an agile project management application should have?

Answer 1

An agile project management application should have:

• A shrubbery;
• an ejector seat;
• a recycling toilet;
• a user inteface;
• maybe a database; and
• a Cherry on top.

But seriously... Agile really is just another work process... Team planning (Gantt charts), a minimal workflow engine, communications, general record-keeping, recording estimates verses actuals... It's all pretty well covered by existing software (and thats one of the reasons Agile took-off).

Cheers. Keith.

Answer 2

A good starting point would be an existing Agile project management application, like

Mingle from Thoughtworks

IMO they qualify as 'agile gurus' :-)

From a personal perspective, I'd say the key to Agile project management is being able to aggregate stories/use-cases/units-of-work (user-contributed) with team progress/feedback (developer-contributed). I think existing tools (say, Microsoft Project) fail here because they are 'static' time-management tools rather than dynamic representations of the current iteration and the backlog/remaining work. If you are not measuring velocity and quality you probably don't really know how your Agile project is going - so you want a tool that helps do that, rather than just a tool that tracks the time people work on stuff.

It's a pretty open-ended question though... why do you ask? Are you planning to build one, or are you looking for criteria to help buy one?

Edit: also, your tool choice is probably dictated by your technology platform - Team Foundation's work items and plug-in methodologies (see Cochango's Scrum plugin) can arguably be described as an Agile project management tool. But that doesn't help if you're using Java/Eclipse and want Jira or something to do it for you.

Answer 3

The core elements would be requirements management, release/iteration management, kanban wall, burn down charts. I'm currently using the app 'Bright Green Projects' - http://www.brightgreenprojects.com