spiraplan overview presentation

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SpiraPlan® - Product InformationAccelerating Project Delivery with Agile Project Management


Objectives

After viewing this presentation you will:

Understand the challenges involved in planning and managing projects and why traditional waterfall methodologies have failed to deliver projects on-time and on-budget.

Have a strong grasp on the project management features provided by SpiraPlan®

Have learned about the benefits of using SpiraPlan® to plan, execute and manage your project


Agenda

Why use Agile Methodologies Project Management Challenges SpiraPlan® Overview Feature Walkthrough

Requirements Management Release Planning Iteration Planning Task Tracking Bug / Issue Tracking Source Code Integration

Integration / Migration Options Synchronization with external bug-trackers Migration from other systems


Why Agile Methodologies?

Traditionally projects are delivered in a series of phases that are based on increasing levels of certainty around the system being built:

However this approach has some drawbacks: It is not flexible to changes in customer requirements Time is wasted building features that nobody needs The end user cannot give feedback till it’s completed coded You don’t know how stable the system is until the end

RequirementsGathering

Business Design

UnitTesting

Traditional Waterfall Methodology

Release Complete

Technical Design

Systems DevelopmentIntegration

Testing

AcceptanceTesting (UAT)


The Agile Approach

Instead of phases, projects are broken down into releases and iterations. At the end of each iteration you have a fully functioning system that could be released:

RequirementsGathering

Business Design

UnitTesting

Traditional Waterfall Methodology

Release Complete

Technical Design

Systems DevelopmentIntegration

Testing

AcceptanceTesting (UAT)

Limited Upfront

Planning

Release #1 Release #2

Agile Methodology

It 1 It 2 It 3 It 4 It 5 It 6

Release #3

It 7 It 8 It 9

Release #4

It 10 It 11 It 12

Iteration N Iteration N

Iteration Planning

Iteration Planning

Release Complete

Development, Continuous Integration, Unit Testing, Functional & Acceptance Testing

Development, Continuous Integration, Unit Testing, Functional & Acceptance Testing


The Agile Approach (3)

The requirements for the project do not have to be codified upfront, instead they are prioritized and scheduled for each iteration: The requirements are composed of ‘stories’ that can be

scheduled into a particular release and iteration

Iteration

IterationScope

Tested,IntegratedWorkingSystem

IterationPlan

Release Plan


The Agile Approach (3)

There are several different agile methods: Agile Unified Process (AUP) Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM) Extreme Programming (XP) Scrum

They have specific features that make them better suited to different situations, but in general, they follow the same basic agile principles*: Individuals and interactions over processes and tools Working software over comprehensive documentation Customer collaboration over contract negotiation Responding to change over following a plan

*Source: Agile Manifesto - http://agilemanifesto.org


The Existing Project Management Toolkit

Traditionally, Software Development organizations use the following tools to manage their lifecycles: Requirements stored in MS-Word documents, MS-Excel

spreadsheets or expensive tools such a RequisitePro, Doors

High-level project plan (GANTT chart) developed in tools such as Microsoft Project, Primavera and printed out for reference

Project estimates prepared using a combination of the high-level project plan and specialized standalone MS-Excel spreadsheets

Detailed schedules maintained by individual team members using MS-Excel, Whiteboards or Groupware solutions

MS-Access, MS-Excel or standalone web-based bug-tracking system for tracking issues and defects


Project Management Toolkit Challenges

As the static project plan with its discrete phases has become replaced by the more flexible agile approach, the old set of tools no longer works: The project requirements and scope are not locked-down so the

schedule of releases and iterations needs to be connected to the requirements backlog in real-time

The project schedule is constantly evolving, with stories being reallocated to different iterations and team members re-estimating the number of stories they can complete (velocity)

Defects and stories need to be managed in the same environment, with the project estimates and schedules taking account of both at all times

SpiraPlan is explicitly designed to address these issues and provide an integrated solution…


SpiraPlan® Overview


Product Overview

Instead of having to buy separate requirements management, project planning and defect tracking tools, SpiraPlan provides a complete Agile Project Management solution in one package.

SpiraPlan manages your project's requirements, stories, release plans, iteration plans, tasks, bugs and issues in one environment. Since it’s web based, teams can collaborate in real time and have up to the minute visibility of the project’s status.


Why Choose SpiraPlan?

The top reasons that our customers choose SpiraPlan over other solutions are: It is a complete solution that includes requirements management,

release planning, iteration planning, task estimation and defect tracking all fully integrated from day one.

Highly intuitive web application that provides a complete picture of a project’s status and health yet requires only a web-browser.

Methodology Agnostic – SpiraPlan can be used equally web for any agile methodology – including Scrum, AUP, XP, DSDM

Ability to leverage your existing technology investments. SpiraPlan integrates with many third-party defect-management systems and software configuration management (SCM) systems.

In addition, we provide superb technical support that ensures that enquiries and questions are dealt with in a timely and professional manner.


Feature Snapshot

Develop high-level requirements with initial estimates

Create notional project schedule with major releases

Prioritize and schedule requirements for each release

Determine resourcing levels to deliver required features

Decompose requirements into detailed task breakdown

Integrated web-based document management.

Allocate tasks to iterations based on detailed task estimates

Load-balance project resources to maximize project velocity

Track issues and defects against project schedule

View project velocity, burndown and burnup reports

Customizable dashboards of key project information

Listed below are some of the many great features that makes SpiraPlan agile project management software the leading choice for companies and organizations worldwide:


Introduction to Agile using SpiraPlan (1)

The first step is to define the project’s requirements. This is a hierarchical list of all the features (both business and

technical) that the system needs to fulfill They can be entered by hand, imported from Excel, or loaded

from other tools like RequisitePro They can be prioritized, contain attachments, be cross-linked

and have project-specific attributes Don’t worry about getting it all right first time, this is Agile, so the

requirements will evolve during the project!

Define Requirements


Introduction to Agile using SpiraPlan(2)

Next, plan out the project’s high-level schedule Include the major releases, minor releases and optionally builds

and iterations depending on desired granularity You can now assign the different lower-level requirements to

each of the releases so that it is possible to start planning the features that will be developed in each release based on customer priority and business value.

In some methodologies (e.g. Scrum) the requirements list is called the project backlog

Define Requirements

Release Planning



Now you start the iteration planning (for the first one): Decompose the requirements into detailed project tasks that can

be prioritized and individually estimated. These estimates can be then compared against the top-down requirement estimate

Assign the tasks to the individual iterations, using the iteration planning functionality to determine if there is enough time/resources to support the planned functionality

Assign any defects that were raised in the previous release/iteration into the current iteration for resolution

In some methodologies (Scrum) this is called ‘sprint planning’

Define Requirements

Release Planning

Iteration Planning



Now you can schedule the team members and load balance the task resourcing allocation: Assign the discrete project tasks and defects to the members of

the development team staffed to the iteration Team members view their individual schedule and task

assignments to determine if they can perform all the tasks The detailed task schedule is updated by the team members,

with the release/iteration schedule reflecting the updates so that the management can make changes to the master schedule

Define Requirements

Release Planning

Iteration Planning

Schedule & Resourcing


Introduction to Agile using SpiraPlan (5)

Real-time status of the progress of the iteration and release is visible by the management during execution: The team members update the actual effort, % complete and

predicted end-date values of their various tasks as they complete the assigned workload

When tasks are completed, or if exception conditions occur (late starting tasks, late finishing tasks, overruns, etc.), the status of the overall iteration and release is updated to give early indication of needed management intervention

In addition the progress of the tasks is linked back to the original requirements, so there is full requirements traceability

Define Requirements

Release Planning

Iteration Planning

Schedule & Resourcing

Tracking & Reporting


Feature Walkthrough


Personalized ‘My Page’

Upon login to SpiraPlan, you are presented with a personalized ‘dashboard’ of all your key information, consolidated onto a single page for you to take immediate action.


Project Home Page

Each project has a dashboard home-page that summarizes all of the information regarding the project into a comprehensive, easily digestible form.

It provides a “one-stop-shop” for people interested in understanding the overall status and health of the project at a glance.


Project Portfolio Management

Projects in SpiraPlan can be organized into Project Groups that belong to a common organization, customer or division. This allows you to view a summary project group dashboard that lets you view the aggregate status of the group as whole as well as compare the relative health of the different projects in the group.


Requirements Management

You have the ability to create and manage project scope / requirements in a hierarchical organization. Requirements can be prioritized, estimated and also associated with a specific release.


Requirements Elaboration (Tasks)

Each requirement can then be decomposed into its low-level assignable work items called ‘tasks’. Each can be separately estimated to validate the overall high-level requirement estimate.


Release Planning

You have the ability to create a master release schedule containing all the major milestone releases together with the individual iterations – smaller releases of the system delivered every 4-6 weeks.


Iteration Planning

Tasks developed during the requirements elaboration can be associated with specific iterations in the release schedule.

The system will track the available resources for an iteration and calculate the available effort as tasks and incidents are added.


Task Progress Tracking

SpiraPlan™ provides the ability to edit assign and track the project tasks that have been assigned to members of the project team. You can search, filter and sort the list of tasks to quickly find those that are behind schedule or are late starting.

This allows you to track the progress of the tasks in the system and determine if tasks are suffering from schedule overrun or misestimation. In addition you can compare actuals for continuous process improvement.


Resource Tracking

Once the tasks and incidents have been scheduled against the iteration plan and assigned to the project personnel resources, you can use the Resource Tracking screens to view the total assigned workload for the members of the project and determine if any resource load balancing is necessary.


Bug / Issue Tracking

The system provides the ability to create, edit, assign, track, manage and close incidents (i.e. bugs, issues, risks, defects, enhancements) that are raised during the testing of the software system under development.


Document Management

All documents and web links uploaded to the system are available in the integrated document management system. This allows you to organize the documents into folders, categorize by document types and associate with meta-tags. Once uploaded, users can search, sort and filter the documents as well as find dynamically related items through the meta-tag hyperlinks.


Document Version Tracking

Once uploaded to the central knowledge repository, revisions to the documents can be uploaded so that there is complete audit trail of all changes made to artifacts and associated documentation in the project.


Customizable Incident Fields

You can customize each of the fields used in the Incident tracking module to suit your own business needs - including incident type, status, priority and severity. You can even associate your own color schemes with the different priorities and severities.


Customizable Workflows & Notifications

Each of the different incident types can follow its own customized workflow that you can map to the business processes used by your organization. Each workflow consists of a customizable set of steps and transitions.

In addition each transition can be used to send email notifications to the detector, owner or users in a certain project group.


Document Attachments

You can upload document attachments and URLs to Requirements, Releases, Tasks and Incidents in the system. Each of these artifacts includes an attachment view that allows users to view the existing attachments, delete an existing attachment and upload new documents.


Software Configuration Management (SCM)

SpiraPlan allows you to link your existing software configuration management (SCM) repositories to a particular project. When this is done, you can browse the contents of the repository (folders, files and revisions) directly in the SpiraPlan web interface.


Source Code Integration

In addition to being able to view the contents of the source code repository, using SpiraPlan you can link artifacts in the system to specific source code revisions. This allows you to associate implemented requirements, completed tasks or resolved defects/incidents with the corresponding code changes. This provides end-to-end traceability from requirements to software code.


Change History Tracking

All of the changes made to a particular artifact in the system are tracked by SpiraPlan, so that at any time you can view the history log of all the changes made to an artifact, including the date of the change, who made the change, and what information was changed.


Artifact Associations

Each requirement can be linked to an unlimited number of other requirements, incidents and source code revisions, providing traceability between related artifacts. For example a change request incident that turns into a new requirement can be associated to preserve the pedigree of the requirement.


Custom Properties

In addition to the built-in fields that are associated with each type of artifact, you can also define custom properties for each type of artifact in the system, both free-text properties and those where the user has to choose from a predefined list.


Printable Reports Library

SpiraPlan includes an extensive reports library that can display information such as Requirements Progress, Release Plan Status, Task Progress and Incident Status. Supported formats include HTML, XML, Word, Excel.


Graphical Charts Library

SpiraPlan includes a rich library of graphical charts and graphs that illustrate key metrics in the system including Project Velocity, Task Burndown, Burnup, Bug Discovery Rate, Bug Aging and Turnaround times.


Integration / Migration Options


Integration with Other Systems (1)

SpiraPlan® is able to leverage your existing investments in requirements management and bug tracking systems:

Requirements Management Synchronize requirements / use cases with IBM Rational Requisite Pro

Bug / Issue Tracking Synchronize incidents with Atlassian JIRA Synchronize incidents with Bugzilla Synchronize incidents with FogBugz Synchronize incidents with Mantis Synchronize incidents with Microsoft Team Foundation Server


Integration with Other Systems (2)

SpiraPlan® is able to leverage your existing investments in Software Configuration Management (SCM) systems:

Current: Integration with Subversion repositories

Planned Integration with CVS repositories Integration with Microsoft TFS repositories Integration with Microsoft VSS repositories Integration with Rational ClearCase repositories


Questions?Please contact [email protected] if you have additional questions.


Legal Notices

DISCLAIMER: All product comparison diagrams have been made on the basis of information available on respective product websites. The analysis and views expressed in the diagrams and the information made available are purely those of Inflectra Corporation. It is possible that competing products have additional features not mentioned on the product websites.