SpiraPlan Overview*
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®
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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
Requirements
Gathering
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:
Requirements
Gathering
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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
Iteration
Scope
Tested,
Integrated
Working
System
Iteration
Plan
Scrum
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
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
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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
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Competitive Landscape
We believe that SpiraPlan offers an unbeatable combination of
capability and affordability:
Breadth of Features / Capability
Representative Customers
The following are some of the organizations who are using SpiraPlan
to manage their application development lifecycles:
Energy & Industrial
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
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
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 Planning
Iteration Planning
Introduction to Agile using SpiraPlan(4)
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, 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 Planning
Iteration Planning
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
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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.
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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.
© Copyright 2006-2013, Inflectra Corporation
Requirements Management
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Requirements Elaboration (Tasks)
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Release Planning
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The requirements (user stories), tasks and outstanding incidents
(bugs, issues) can be scheduled against the different iterations in
the release.
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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.
© Copyright 2006-2013, Inflectra Corporation
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.
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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.
© Copyright 2006-2013, Inflectra Corporation
Bug / Issue Tracking
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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.
© Copyright 2006-2013, Inflectra Corporation
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.
© Copyright 2006-2013, Inflectra Corporation
Customizable Incident Fields
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Customizable Workflows & Notifications
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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
© Copyright 2006-2013, Inflectra Corporation
Software Configuration Management (SCM)
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Source Code Integration
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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.
© Copyright 2006-2013, Inflectra Corporation
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.
© Copyright 2006-2013, Inflectra Corporation
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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.
© Copyright 2006-2013, Inflectra Corporation
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.
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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.
© Copyright 2006-2013, Inflectra Corporation
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.
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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.
© Copyright 2006-2013, Inflectra Corporation
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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.
© Copyright 2006-2013, Inflectra Corporation
Configuration Management
Integration Overview
SpiraPlan has a very flexible architecture and has been integrated
with a variety of external tools and systems:
SpiraPlan
Requirements
Releases
Tasks
Defects
Documents
Bugzilla
Defect-Tracking
Jira
Defect-Tracking
Atlassian Bamboo
SpiraPlan® is able to connect to your continuous integration (CI)
build server to link revisions and defects with continuous
builds:
© Copyright 2006-2013, Inflectra Corporation
SpiraPlan® is able to leverage your existing investments in
requirements management and bug tracking systems:
Bug / Issue Tracking
Synchronize incidents with Bugzilla
Synchronize incidents with FogBugz
Synchronize incidents with Mantis
Synchronize incidents with AxoSoft OnTime
Synchronize incidents with IBM Rational ClearQuest and RTC
© Copyright 2006-2013, Inflectra Corporation
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:
© Copyright 2006-2013, Inflectra Corporation
SpiraPlan® is able to leverage your existing investments in
Software Configuration Management (SCM) systems:
Current:
Integration with Perforce repositories
Integration with StarTeam repositories
© Copyright 2006-2013, Inflectra Corporation
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
© Copyright 2006-2013, Inflectra Corporation
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Legal Notices
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