Spira plan overview presentation

© Copyright 2006-2013, Inflectra Corporation - 1 -

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: Scrum Extreme Programming (XP) Agile Unified Process (AUP) Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM)

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, user 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

Prioritize and schedule requirements for each iteration

Determine resourcing levels to deliver required features

Planning board for easy communication of backlog

Decompose requirements into detailed task breakdown

Integrated web-based document management.

Allocate tasks to developers based on 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

Integration with multiple IDEs

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


Competitive Landscape

We believe that SpiraPlan offers an unbeatable combination of capability and affordability:

Breadth of Features / Capability

Aff

orda

bilit

y

SmartBearQaComplete

AxoSoft OnTime

JIRA & GreenhopperScrumWorks

Mingle

XPlanner SpiraPlan

IncumbentsUncompetitive

ChallengersNiche PlayersSource: Inflectra Corporation, 2011

AcuNote


Representative Customers The following are some of the organizations who are using

SpiraPlan to manage their application development lifecycles:

Energy & Industrial

Government

Retail & Consumer Goods

Healthcare & Bio-Technology

Financial & Business Services

Information Technology

Transportation & Hospitality

Telecommunications


Testimonials “…My team has used SpiraPlan for over 6 months and have been satisfied

with the Project Management and collaboration features of the software. Will definitely use Inflectra products again.“- Dan – Vector One Consulting

“…SpiraPlan from Inflectra is a lifesaver! It was very easy to use, organized, and user-friendly. I will definitely recommend and utilize this program in the future.”- Lindsay Snider

“…We use Inflectra software in many of our projects and we are proud to offer their tools to our customers. It is also big pleasure to cooperate with the Inflectra team.“- Viktor Tarnavskyi – Soflab Technology

“The team here really have a great product on their hands with helpfulness and ease. Who wouldn't use this software for business planning needs?! ...“- Mika


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 that the system needs

to fulfill (in some methodologies they are called user stories) They can be entered by hand, imported from a variety of tools:

MS-Office documents such as Excel, Word or Project Modeling tools such as RequisitePro or Enterprise Architect

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

In some methodologies (e.g. Scrum) the requirements list is called the Project Backlog and iterations are called Sprints.

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

Potentially re-assign the requirements and tasks to different iterations, if there is not enough time/resources to support the planned functionality

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

Define Requirements

Release PlanningIteration 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 PlanningIteration PlanningSchedule & 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, remaining effort 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 PlanningIteration PlanningSchedule &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.

RSS Feeds of your information are available


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.It includes key graphs such as task burndown and team velocity


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

The requirements (user stories), tasks and outstanding incidents (bugs, issues) can be scheduled against the different iterations in the release.

The system will calculate the available effort as requirements are added.

© Copyright 2006-2013, Inflectra Corporation

Agile / Scrum Planning Board

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The Planning Board allows teams to easily visualize the requirements, tasks and incidents assigned to each iteration.

You can drill-down to see the items assigned to each developer in iteration for load-balancing.

Drag-and-drop editing and color-coding maximize efficiency.


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 requirements, tasks and incidents have been scheduled against the iteration plan, you can use the Resource Tracking screens to view the total assigned workload for the members of the project and determine the resource assignments and perform load balancing if 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.


Attachments & Screenshot Capture

You can upload document attachments to Requirements, Tasks, Releases 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 from their workstation.

In addition, there is a built-in screen capture utility for quickly adding screenshots to a test execution or incident report


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.


Build Management

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SpiraPlan provides the ability to integrate with continuous integration build servers such as Hudson and CruiseControl so that the status of builds can be recorded in SpiraPlan and linked to source code revisions and incidents. This provides traceability for each build, so that you can see what was changed in each build and what was fixed.


Customizable Reporting Dashboard

SpiraPlan includes an extensive reports library that can display information such as Requirements Progress, Release Plan Status, Task Progress and Incident Status.

SpiraPlan allows you to build a customized reporting dashboard featuring your frequently-used graphs, charts and reports.

The graphs available include: Project Velocity, Burndown, Burnup, Bug Discovery Rates, and Incident Aging.

Supported formats include HTML, XML, Word, Excel.


Timecard Submission

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SpiraPlan includes a built-in timecard entry system that lets developers quickly and easily enter the time spent each day on their assigned tasks and incidents.


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 complete audit trail of all the changes made to an artifact, including the date of the change, who made the change, and what information was changed.

SpiraPlan features full version-control capabilities that allow you to rollback specific changes and revert the artifact back to a prior revision.


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.

The system supports a variety of different field types including: text, rich-text, dropdown lists, user selectors, and date-fields


Visual Studio & Eclipse IDE Integration

Developers can work on assigned requirements, tasks and incidents directly inside their Integrated Development Environment (IDE).

SpiraPlan has plug-ins available for both Eclipse and Visual Studio.

Research has shown that allowing developers to use the same tool to develop their code and manage their workload enhances efficiency and improves data accuracy.


Email Integration

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SpiraPlan has a built-in email notification engine that lets you define custom email templates and notification events. This enables the system to send out notifications when specific events occur (e.g. user is assigned a test case, the priority of a requirement changes, etc.).

In addition, SpiraPlan can connect to your email system and retrieve users’ comments and attach them to the appropriate artifact in the system. It can also create new incidents directly from emails, saving users’ time.


Integration / Migration Options


Configuration Management

Integration Overview

SpiraPlan has a very flexible architecture and has been integrated with a variety of external tools and systems:

SpiraPlanRequirements

ReleasesTasks

DefectsDocuments

BugzillaDefect-Tracking

JiraDefect-Tracking

Visual StudioDefect-Tracking

Various ToolsRequirements

MS-OfficeLegacy Data

SubversionSource Code

Git / MercurialSource Code

Selenium-RCFunctional

Testing

FogBugzDefect-Tracking

TestCompleteFunctional &Load Testing

Development Environment

EclipseTask Mgt

Visual StudioTask Mgt


Integration with Build Servers

Currently Available: Hudson Jenkins

Planned: CruiseControl TeamCity Atlassian Bamboo

SpiraPlan® is able to connect to your continuous integration (CI) build server to link revisions and defects with continuous builds:


Integration with Bug-Tracking Systems

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

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 Synchronize incidents with AxoSoft OnTime Synchronize incidents with IBM Rational ClearQuest and RTC


Integration with Requirements Mgt Systems

Synchronize requirements with IBM Rational RequisitePro Synchronize requirements with Sparx Enterprise Architect Synchronize requirements with Jama Contour Synchronize requirements with IBM DOORS Synchronize user stories with Version One

SpiraPlan® is able to leverage your existing investments in requirements management and UML modeling systems:


Integration with SCM Systems

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

Current: Integration with Subversion repositories Integration with CVS repositories Integration with Microsoft TFS repositories Integration with Microsoft VSS repositories Integration with Mercurial distributed repositories Integration with GIT distributed repositories Integration with Perforce repositories

Planned Integration with Rational ClearCase repositories Integration with StarTeam repositories


Integration with Developer IDEs

SpiraPlan® is able to integrate with your developers’ Integrated Development Environment (IDE):

Ability to manage requirements, tasks and incidents inside Visual Studio 2005, 2008 or 2010

Ability to manage requirements, tasks and incidents inside Eclipse Galileo or later


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.

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Spira plan overview presentation