Best Agile Project Management Tools & Techniques

Do you know, more than 70% of the businesses have adopted Agile technologies for diverse projects as of 2022?

Agile project management and software development is an iterative process. Rather than focusing solely on the introduction of the product, the teams deliver genuine product value in each iteration. The smaller chunks approach to product development (or, for that matter, any sort of planning) has proven to be highly effective: teams can provide outcomes faster and with fewer roadblocks. In order to achieve this, agile project management tools play an important role in empowering teams to finish projects on schedule and not deteriorate its quality. Before we delve deeper, let’s first understand the common challenges while developing an Agile project.

Common Agile Adoption Challenges

The software development world is an excellent example of how iterative work helps teams deliver early and often. Prior to the widespread adoption of iterative work, software development teams were frequently requested to complete an entire project before passing it on to a customer. It was back to the drawing board if the deliverable was incorrect. Agile project management teams now finish smaller chunks of work before seeking feedback from stakeholders and/or consumers, allowing everyone to view a working demo and provide feedback before moving forward.

While there are numerous advantages to using Agile project development, agile implementation challenges are also quite common. The most common hurdles firms face when implementing and scaling Agile methodology, according to the 2021 State of Agile study, are:

• Throughout the organization, there is a general aversion to change
• Support from management and sponsorship are insufficient
• There is a scarcity of Agile skills and experience
• In Agile, there is a dearth of leadership participation
• Across teams, processes and practices are inconsistent
• Education and training are lacking
• There isn't enough availability from the client, the business, or the product owner
• The company's traditional project management procedures are overly entrenched

Many of the challenges that firms experience when implementing Agile are similar to those that any large-scale organizational change faces. Setbacks are frequently caused by poor change management rather than by Agile. When implementing Agile project management, you must follow consistent Agile rules and change management best practices.

Also Read: MVP in Agile: How to do it the Right Way?

How to Choose the Best Agile Project Management Tool

Project management is a difficult task. There appears to be a million moving parts, reams of data to evaluate, dozens of individuals to keep informed, not to mention personnel and all of the possible dangers hiding in those seas. The software you employ to assist you with this task should make it easier, not more difficult. Consider searching for these below-mentioned characteristics in the Agile project management tools you're evaluating to assist you make the best option.

A Central Location for Stories and Flaws

This is fundamental. Your Agile PM tool should provide a simple, intuitive interface for viewing and categorizing all active stories and defects, as well as a backlog and archive for future reference. This is where you get your task breakdowns. This information should be accessible to everyone in the company promptly and simply.

Tracking the Status of Tasks, Stories, Sprints, and Releases

The entire process is incredibly dynamic as each sprint — and, indeed, each complete project – proceeds. Throughout a sprint, tasks and stories will be at varying stages of completion, and each release will have numerous sprints. Your Agile PM tool should be able to keep track of all of this information in real time, preferably with simple and clear charting tools so you can see your current state at a glance. Burnup and Burndown charts are critical to the successful management of Agile projects, and they should be a standard feature.

Scalability

It wouldn't make sense to start utilizing a tool that works great for teams but starts to fall short at the programme level and doesn't do anything for the portfolio level. The greatest technology for managing Agile projects will be fully scalable across the enterprise and provide critical data to decision-makers at all levels. It should also be able to scale up and down with the company as the number and complexity of projects varies over time.

Definitions for Sprints

Each sprint has a set of stories and/or defects that must be completed in a particular amount of time (usually two weeks). Your software should enable you to successfully establish each sprint, including start and end dates. This will have a direct impact on the value of your tool's reporting functions, as explained below.

Queries that are both Standard and Customized

Standard queries, such as those that produce a sprint burndown graphic, will almost certainly be present in any Agile project management solution, but custom inquiries are just as vital. Basically, you want to be able to retrieve the information you need when you need it without being constrained by the software manufacturer's limited library of typical queries.

Support for Test Cases

If your solution allows you to document and track test cases and their findings, both for automated tests and higher-level manual testing scenarios, that's a huge plus. Because this data can and should be used to guide future tasks, stories, and defects, it makes sense to preserve it in the same place.

Features of the Workflow

It will be much easier to manage your projects if the software you chose has solid workflow capabilities. A good workflow can guide you through the next logical step in the process based on the information you've already entered, and it can send out email reminders to everyone involved so that everyone is on the same page throughout the project. This makes it easier to make wise decisions and be more efficient.

Also Read: The Benefits of Custom Software Development

Tips to Create an Effective Agile Environment

It takes more than a procedural change to make the switch to Agile. It also necessitates a cultural shift. Changing culture is the most difficult component for most businesses. For various reasons, I believe this is correct. Companies become accustomed to their methods, whether they are effective or not. Many people continue to believe that requirements alter as a result of poor management. They are incapable of comprehending a change-embracing process. Managers have been taught how to keep situations under control. It is not intuitive or reasonable to empower the development team to deliver and own the project.

However, the main four pointers for an effective Agile environment are:

• Over processes and tools, it's about people and their interactions

People must be valued over systems, and the firm must be willing and open to adapt to changing demands.

• Working software trumps thorough documentation

The focus must be on producing usable project deliverables. Stakeholders, especially the executive, should support decreasing paperwork requirements and eliminating unnecessary documentation to allow team members to spend more time generating project deliverables.

• Collaboration with customers is preferred over contract negotiations

The consumer must be treated as a teammate, and an open connection based on frequent communication must be established. Your business must be willing to make changes to meet the needs of the consumer, even if this involves amending the initial contract.

• Adapting to change in accordance with a strategy

A desire to be flexible and react fast to changes is required in an Agile workplace. If technology forces a scope change in the middle of a project, an Agile team will incorporate it into the following sprint, but a traditional environment may be unwilling to adjust.

Top Agile Tools You Can Use

Agile project management solutions enable Agile methodologies such as Scrum, Kanban, Scrumban, and other agile hybrid approaches. Agile is defined as a project management style in software development that entails breaking down a large work structure into several smaller tasks and assigning those tasks to short and incremental work phases known as sprints.Here is a list of tools to help you with Agile development:

Jira

Atlassian Jira, an Agile development solution, is one of the most well-known Agile project management solutions. This agile technology is popular among teams all around the world, however it is not without problems.
As much as the next person, we enjoy a good puzzle. Jira, on the other hand, is far too complicated, requiring developers just to put it up! It's also one of the more expensive project management tools, with even small teams pushing the cost into the thousands of dollars.

Features:

• Boards for tracking issues
• Epics
• Custom fields for bug tracking

GitHub Project Management

GitHub is fantastic since it keeps track of all updates made by a full team in real time. This Agile project management software interfaces with a variety of other tools, allowing team members (from developers to product owners) to work on the same code at the same time, making it an excellent Agile tool for development teams. GitHub provides a private space for each team member as well as a public space where community members can come and help you improve your code.

Features:

• Tracking issues
• Labels for teamwork mentions
• Issues and pull requests should be linked.

Active Collab

Look no further if you're seeking a low-cost way to handle papers and easy chores. Active Collab is an Agile application with excellent document management, budgeting, and reporting capabilities. The only apparent drawback is that Active Collab's task view is a timeline and column view rather than a Gantt Chart.

Features:

• Project progress is labeling
• repeating tasks set
• Reports on workload

Axosoft

Axosoft allows you to plan everything from sprints until the release of your product. It aids in the visualization of each stage of the software development process and even generates some visually appealing graphs. It enables you to prioritize features so that the most important ones are accomplished first. It also offers a fantastic Scrum tool that allows the Scrum master to schedule the completion of certain features.

Features:

• Estimates of time
• Management of the product backlog
• Scrum mode on a daily basis
• Charts of burndown

Wrike

Wrike is an award-winning set of Agile project management tools for groups of five or more people. Users may modify processes, dashboards, and reports using this highly flexible agile project management software.

To illustrate priorities, Wrike's intuitive interface allows users to transition between Kanban boards, interactive drag-and-drop Gantt charts, and workload views. Wrike has a number of simple agile templates, backlog management capabilities, collaboration and feedback areas, as well as agile reporting and analytics. Agile folder organization and automated task management are among the other capabilities.

Features:

• Task modeling that is holistic and thorough
• Voting for roadmap features based on community feedback

6. Kintone

Kintone is a project management application that helps managers to keep track of, prioritize, and review the activities of their teams. This customisable platform uses a drag-and-drop interface to allow users with no coding experience to construct project management solutions. Users can iterate by creating processes and reviewing the tasks that go through them.

Features:

• Built-in communication channels
• Chat capabilities
• Can create chat "rooms" based on a topic, team, project, or department
• Can connect to Google Calendar, Outlook, Tableau, Slack, Gmail, Dropbox, Salesforce, Hubspot, and many more through Zapier.

7. Ravetree

Ravetree is an Agile Work Management software platform with best-in-class Agile project management, resource planning, time and expense tracking, digital asset management, and CRM. Ravetree is a project management solution for Agile businesses, unlike other Agile project management tools that are designed exclusively for software teams. Marketing and advertising, engineering, architecture, management consulting, legal accounting, higher education, non-profits, and government are among the industries where it excels.

Features:

• Easily track multiple projects
• Robust budgeting features
• Distinction between billable and non-billable hours

Wrapping Up,

There may be missteps, some individuals will not like it, and the transition period may be stressful, as with any large organizational change. Don't be put off by this. The time and effort it takes to set up an Agile work environment is well worth the increased productivity, product quality, and employee satisfaction it may provide.

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