COMPARISON STUDY BETWEEN AGILEFANT AND XPLANNER PLUS

Professor Daniel AmyotRui jun Fan 6 4 7 2 4 6 2

Badr A l suba ih i 6 2 0 8 0 7 0

Submitted to Professor Daniel Amyot in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the course CSI 5112 (Software Engineering)

Outline

Business Context

Study Plan

High Impact Criteria

Low Impact Criteria

Results

Conclusion

Introduction about Agile Methods

"Agile" is an umbrella term used to describe a variety of methods that encourage continual realignment of development goals with the needs and expectations of the customer.

Agile Methods are a reaction to traditional ways of developing software.

Agile Methods are actually a collection of different techniques (or practices) that share the same values and basic principles.

Business Context

Software Development Company.Main Business: Insourcing Projects ( two to

six month long projects).Number of Employees: 2 teams (4 developers) and

a Projects Manager.Development Technique: Incremental Development

Methods (Agile). The purpose of this study:

Select an Agile management tool that fits our company’s needs from the head manager to all employs.

Study Plan

Minimal Requirements:The two selected tools must meet these criteria to be under evaluation.

High Impact Criteria:It is out of ten and reflects the need of this criterion in our company.

Low Impact Criteria:It is out of five and reflects how much this criterion can improve and facilitate our work.

Minimal Requirements

Cost: As a small company, open source and free Agile tools has the highest priority.

Compatible Running Environment: Operating System: Windows 7.

Database: to be designed in MySQL. Active Life Cycle:

By looking at previous releases and how much

improvements have been done in between.

Minimal Requirements

Criteria\Tool

IceScrum Agilefant Agilo Xplanner+

Cost Free(5)

Free(5)

$1500/year(2)

Free(5)

Platform HSQL(3)

Windows + MYSQL

(5)

Web-based(4)

Windows + MYSQL(5)

Life Cycle Active(4)

Active(4)

Active(5)

Active(4)

Scores 12 14 11 14

Agilefant and Xplanner plus

Agilefant It is developed by Software

Business and Engineering Institute

(SoberIT) at Helsinki University of

Technology. System Requirements:

OS: (tested on Windows, Apple OS and Linux) Java (Sun jdk 1.5, 1.6,) Application server: Tomcat 5.5, 6.0, or 7.0 RAM at least 512M for Tomcat. Database: MySQL 5. Browser: (Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome).

• Many problems on Microsoft Internet Explorer.

Score (9)

Xplanner-plus It is commonly used and based on

Xplanner, which had a large user

base and was the primary tool on

the market. System Requirements:

OS: (tested on Linux and Windows). Java (Sun jdk 1.5, 1.6, openjdk 6). Application server: Tomcat 5.5, 6.0; jetty 5. RAM at least 512M for Tomcat. Database: HSQLDB, MySQL. Browser: Any.

Score (10)

High Impact Criteria: Usability

Agilefant1. Ease of Installation: (3 hours)

1. Requires little training.

2. Does not affect other installed programs.

2. User Interfaces: easy to

understand and simple in a

reasonable way.

Score (9)

Xplanner plus1. Ease of Installation: (2 hours)

1. Does not require training.

2. Does not affect other installed programs.

2. User Interfaces: very simple

and straightforward but requires

many clicks to perform simple

action.

Score (9)

High Impact Criteria: Documentation

Agilefant

1) The installation documentation is

sufficient.

2) The user guide: uses wiki. It is very

clear and can be used for training.

3) Support:

1) The Forum: very active (with 141 topics).

2) The Email: effective responses.

Score (8)

Xplanner-plus

1) The installation documentation is

brief.

2) The user guide: We are sorry to admit

that there isn't much in term of user

documentation. However, the tool is intuitive

enough that little documentation is needed.

3) Support:

1) The Forum: does not have.

2) The Email: effective responses.

Score (6)

High Impact Criteria: Functionality

Agilefant1) Manager:

1) Provides most of Microsoft Project features.

2) Set Project Roles.

3) Nice Dashboard.

4) Portfolio management.

5) Tracking:1) Built-In-Time Tracking-

System.

2) Effort Spent.

6) Communications with teams:1) Set up automatic Reminders.

2) Emails.

7) Generate Reports: (web page or Excel). Roadmap Reports.

High Impact Criteria: Functionality

Xplanner-plus1) Manager:

1) Provides most of Microsoft Project features.

2) Set Project Roles.

3) Dashboard (Promising)

4) Tracking:1) Online time tracking and

time sheet generation.

2) Effort Spent can not be according to users.

5) Communications with teams:1) Emails.

2) Virtual note cards

6) Generate and export Reports: (XML, MS Project, Excel).

High Impact Criteria: Functionality

Agilefant

1) Developers: Supports prioritization.

Has Product Backlog.

Personal work queue

Can clearly see what other

developers is planning to do

Nice Graphical presentation.

Xplanner-plus

1) Developers: Support TWiki-style text formatting.

Support external tool integration and

extensible wiki word linking.

Drag and Drop stories to next

iteration.

attach notes to stories and tasks.

Multi-select options for actions.

High Impact Criteria: Functionality

Agilefant

Manager: 4 out 4

Developer: 5 out 6

Score (9)

Xplanner-plus

Manager: 3 out of 4

Developer: 5 out 6

Score (8)

High Impact Criteria: Performance

Agilefant

Although it is rich of

features, it has a high

performance and

responds to project’s

changes.

Score (9)

Xplanner-plus

Sometimes, it has a bug

on a main feature which

is reporting.

Score (7)

Low Impact Criteria: Suitability

AgilefantPerforms well on

large teams.As result, it performs

well on large projects too.

Score (5)

Xplanner-plusIt is painful to use it

for more than 20 people.

As a result, it is hard to use it for managing large projects.

Score (3)

Low Impact Criteria: Stability

AgilefantSometimes it crashes

when using secondary features but it is rich of features.

Score (4)

Xplanner-plusit is very rear to

crash.

Score (5)

Low Impact Criteria: Scalability

AgilefantIt could collect and

efficiently display Large amounts of data.

Score (5)

Xplanner-plusIt is slower when

dealing with large amounts of data and many users.

Score (3)

Results

High Impact Criteria

Criterion Agilefant Xplanner-plus

Minimal Requirements

9 10

Usability 9 9

Documentation 8 6

Functionality 9 8

Performance 8 7

Total Scores 43 40

Low Impact Criteria

Criterion Agilefant Xplanner-plus

Suitability 5 3

Stability 4 5

Scalability 5 3

Total Scores

14 11

CONCLUSION

Agilefant is a simple but it is very capable tool and a powerful solution. It brings together the perspectives of organizing daily work, long-term product and release planning and project portfolio management.

We would recommend using Agilefant over xplanner-plus.

Thank YouQuestions ?