What Product Teams Need from a Software Development Tracking Tool
Overview:
For decades, product developers have created unique processes and tools to serve as a guide in brainstorming, documenting, and developing new entries into the market. With the increasing popularity of web software applications came a more flexible development lifecycle and new guiding process frameworks like Agile. Almost more of a mindset than true project management technique, Agile works to avoid dedication to long term planning in favor of nimble and flexible scheduling. If it sounds like this might be difficult for enterprise level quarterly planning, you wouldn’t be wrong. But, since digital applications can be built, tested, and released at the drop of a hat, it makes sense to embrace this flexibility in order to stay ahead of the competition.
Staying flexible, however, means that software product teams must be especially keen at estimating and understanding the scope of their projects. To help with this, many tracking applications have been created to provide structure to the amoeba that Agile has become. CA Technologies Rally, a Scrum-based, task-oriented, app is used by many large organizations because it is easily scalable and can be integrated into enterprise security and release tools. Atlassian Jira, its competitor, is often preferred by smaller organizations who need a more flexible solution. Jira can be set up without a strong learning curve and provides inexpensive pricing based on number of users.
What product managers need from a tracking tool:
Modern product managers are often responsible for wearing many hats. From developing a product idea and business case to implementing a rollout plan, documentation can be a very important part of the job. For this reason, software development tracking tools like Rally and Jira play a large part in the life of any product team. The most important product-specific consideration when selecting a tool for your organization is its ability to integrate with other common documentation solutions. Jira, for example, has built in compatibility with Confluence for functional specs and Gliffy for flowcharts and diagrams that can be very useful in explaining functionality to a development team.
Another concern for your product team may be a tool’s flexibility to match the requirements of your project. Rally, based entirely within a Scrum framework is great for large-scale projects that begin from scratch, but is not very graceful in tracking day-to-day operations or maintenance tasks. This emerges mostly from its use of user stories as the primary tracking feature for Sprints. User stories must be “Accepted” in order to be completed and can be broken down into development and QA tasks. Given that they are rooted in the Scrum framework, it can be difficult for an Agile product team to insert a quick request or task that is not connected to any existing large-scale initiative or represented by a user story.
Perhaps the most important product related consideration when looking at these tools is ownership. As many product managers work with or also refer to themselves as “Product Owners” it is extremely important to understand who is responsible for a specific request or task. Rally allows a user to select an “Owner” for a specific story which is useful, but does not easily distinguish between Owner and Assignee the way Jira does. When using Jira, the person who “Created” the issue serves as the owner with the “Assignee” being responsible for the task itself. Placing more emphasis on the tasks provides a more flexible approach reminiscent of task platforms such as Asana, Trello, or Basecamp.
Conclusion:
Ultimately, when selecting a software development tool for you team, consider that the choice could have strong implications into day-to-day operations and processes. Jira, being a more flexible, and integration-based platform is the right choice if you have many different projects with various needs for documentation. Rally, since it is less customizable and consistent across teams, might be the better choice for larger organizations that require monitoring across departments. Velocity, working hours, and release tracking are easy to calculate in Rally for those teams that contribute as part of a larger budget. Be careful with too much planning though. Since all of these tools are meant to be used within the Agile framework, it makes sense to always allow for as much flexibility as possible.
