LeanKit and Focused Objective announced a partnership to provide customers with an integrated product offering. The combined solution will bring industry leading quantitative analysis to LeanKit’s and Focused Objective’s customer base in an easy to use and immediately available way. This analysis includes forecasting project delivery dates, pinpointing what factors such as staffing, quality, scope change, etc. are having the greatest impact on delivery dates, and the ability to find what staff skill additions will have the most impact. “The ability to answer tough questions relating to date, cost, staff and ...

Altova announced the public beta launch of MetaTeam, a new team management and project collaboration cloud service. MetaTeam is a different kind of project management solution. It breaks down the mysteries of team organization into simple steps that anyone — not just project managers — can use effectively. Specifically designed to foster agile collaboration, MetaTeam makes teams more productive by creating an environment of transparency and information accessibility. At the same time, for larger teams and more elaborate projects it raises accountability and commitment by spelling out individual roles and responsibilities. “Altova ...

Zilicus announced launch of its online project management software ZilicusPM on Google Apps Marketplace. With the launch of ZilicusPM on Google Apps Marketplace, over 4 million business users who are currently using Google Apps Marketplace will be able to discover, purchase and deploy integrated business applications and related professional services. ZilicusPM integrates the user account with application data stored in Google Apps, thus provides a simplified user experience, increased business efficiency, and reduced administrative overhead. Existing Google Apps Marketplace users can now use ZilicusPM as a prudent project management solution to ...

Systems and software projects traditionally experienced some degree of project failure. In this context, failure is defined as a project that demonstrated a failure to match, within a reasonable tolerance, the expected outcome. Successful software projects demonstrate good project management methods incorporating modern processes and effective utilization of metrics. This article extends the application of control theory methods to project management decisions to include optimization of systems trade-offs to improve project performance. Applying the feedback control theory to the management decision process improve performance of the project process. Usage of parametric models ...

Historically, estimation methods have focused on effort at the team level. Recent agile software development practices have shed light on taking individuals – who are acting as part of a team—into consideration. A lot of software – mobile device apps, services, components – is now written by one-person teams, thus demonstrating the need for engineering discipline at the individual level. Emerging trends in software development for mobile devices suggest effort estimation methods can be employed for one-person endeavors and those methods can benefit teams, but those methods are still very ...

Marathon training and product development have a lot of similarities. They should be both treated and executed as time bound and goal oriented projects. To be successful, you need a lot of flexibility, introspection and continuous improvisation. Author: Girish Deshpande, Technical Director at MindTree Republished with permission. Original publication: http://girish-deshpande.com/?p=111 Close to 38,000 runners ran Mumbai marathon today, the greatest marathon event in India.  As I could not run this marathon due to health issues I had plenty of time to think about similarities between two of my core interests -Marathon running and ...

We’re agile, so we don’t have to estimate and have no deadlines, right? Wrong! This session provides a review of the problem with estimation in projects today, and then an overview of the concept of agile estimation and the notion of re-estimation. Learn about user stories, story points, team velocity, how to apply them all to estimation and iterative re-estimation. We look at the cone of uncertainty and how to use it to your advantage. We then look at the tools we will use for Agile Estimation, including planning poker, Microsoft ...

Daptiv has announced general availability of a Japanese language version of Daptiv PPM. The new offering was a direct result of feedback from customers in the Asia Pacific region. Demand for SaaS software is at an all-time high in Japan, with revenues expected to reach $629.1 million by the end of 2015 (Source: Gartner “Forecast: Software as a Service, All Regions”, 2010-2015, press release Sept 14, 2011). This represents a doubling in growth from 2010 when SaaS revenues reached $315.3 million in Japan. “The Asia Pacific market continues to be of ...

While Kanban has a reputation for being the solution for the Service Delivery side of the IT world, it is highly applicable to classic Product/System Development as well. Thru stories, boards and visibility charts from real clients we will see what works, what’s irrelevant, what’s missing, and how to fill the gaps. This video discusses Classes of Service versus Classes of Treatment, Using Kanban to extend agile to the Product management world, Flow as a way to achieve agility even in the face of heavy testing requirements, and more. Watch this ...

iRise and AppFusions announced new integrations between iRise and two leading products from Atlassian, one of the world’s most popular providers of collaborative platforms for software developers. iRise visualization gives users the ability to create visual prototypes of new software projects that look and act just like the real thing, before a single line of code is written. The technology lets stakeholders and target users “kick the tires” on new applications, including mobile apps, and give feedback while it’s still easy and less costly to make changes. AppFusions’ integrations of iRise ...

Do project managers in software development use software to manage their projects? Or does the shoemaker’s son always go barefoot as the famous proverb says? A recent Methods & Tools poll asked the following question: “Does your project use a software tool to plan, estimate and track project activities?” Total votes: 297 Ending date: April 2012 Source: Methods & Tools This survey shows a widespread adoption of software tools to manage software development projects as more than four respondents out of five were using one tool or more to plan, estimate or track their ...

Clarizen and Testuff announced a partnership seamlessly integrating each company’s flagship software properties. As part of the joint deal, customers will now be able to directly send reports from Testuff to Clarizen along with receiving status messages from Clarizen as issues are handled in real-time. The Clarizen integration will give customers a powerful way to automate the creation of projects to address defects, and ensure consistent communications on the status of each submission. “Clarizen is seeing strong growth from customers who leverage our robust software for issues management, as well as ...

Projecis has released a major upgrade to its flagship cloud-based project management platform. Projecis 2.0 includes a re-designed user interface to promote quicker access to content and features, and home page access to Calendar, Recent Activity and To-Do Items for “At-a-Glance” update capability. Combined with key features such as unlimited storage, file sharing, VoIP meeting center, milestone-task tracking, “work-from-email” ability, document review, and contact management, Projecis allows companies and individuals to track projects and manage information effectively. Projecis subscribers will now find an Activity area where project content actions generated by ...

Estimation in software project management is often an issue. This blog post discusses some psychological aspects of estimating in software development. It explains the following effect that impact our estimation activity: The “halo” effect, framing effects, overconfidence, attribute Substitution, base-rate neglect and anchoring. It defines what they are and give hints on how to improve our estimation capabilities.

Many project tracking taskboards look like they were imposed on the team. They are monochromatic, small and rarely providing too much useful information. A clear and informative taskboard is the heart of a successful team. It keeps everyone focused, radiates loads of information useful on many occasions. This video explains how a well-built physical taskboard is way better than any software tool – if the team is at least a little bit co-located that is. It also provides some visual tricks and explains how they can help your team. A trivial ...

Citrix announced it has completed the acquisition of Podio, an innovative, privately held company that offers a collaborative work platform which supports people and teams getting work done the way they want in a social setting. Podio’s unique apps concept adds structure and activity streams to any type of work and collaboration with teams, clients, in projects, and within functions such as sales, recruiting, marketing or any other area of business. A cloud service, Podio unifies the content, traditional business applications, and new mobile apps, as well as the real-time and ...

Project and portfolio management software company, Project Insight is now offering a data migration of Basecamp data into their product. Project Insight is a mid-market solution for managing projects, resources, documents and collaborating. As a mid-market solution, the functionality exceeds low end tools without losing the overall ease of use. Project Insight often migrates project teams that have outgrown a low end tool to their more robust project system. Basecamp is a solid task and document management tool, however, it does not offer intelligent scheduling, cross project resource allocation, portfolio reporting ...

Clarizen announced it has further enhanced its mobile capabilities with the launch of an Android application to go alongside the existing iPhone application. Additionally, Clarizen has also released a web-based toolbar and web based add-in to Outlook called Clarizen Anywhere that gives users real-time access to their Clarizen tasks and projects without logging in to the Clarizen environment. The Android app now enables Android users to have the critical set of functionalities in the field as they would using their personal computers. The application, already available for iPhone users, will give ...

Axosoft, the company behind the leading project management software for software developers, announced today that its newest version of OnTime will now be the lowest priced, feature-rich scrum project management tool in the market. OnTime 12, the 10th anniversary edition of the popular software, will now be offered as three separate products with blazingly fast speed, increased ease-of-use and at a fraction of its previous price tag – up to 90 percent less. “We realize that a drastic price drop for a seasoned company is a bold move, but it’s a ...

Every organization has to make the decision to replace or make significant business changes to their current legacy system or codebase. Using well-known, core Agile principles, we have found that this transition to software that adapts to rapid business change does not have to be painful, nor expensive, nor technically dissatisfying. This video also describe how newer technologies can still be introduced into a ‘legacy’ enterprise, while still keeping key business data and core business processes unaffected, yet open to future change. Video Producer: Agile Vancouver