Agile Development in the world of IT is a process designed to make app development easy with predictable results.
Agile software development is a defining set of principles that gives software developers tips and ideas on how to respond to unpredictability, find solutions and requirements that usually evolve during individual and team interactions.
The entire development and testing activities are concurrent, unlike the Waterfall model. The term “Agile” has been around for several years now, with newer and better tools presenting itself every year. In this article, we will discuss some of the best tools for effective agile development.
- Jira Agile Jira, an issue and project tracking software, is originally from Atlassian. Over the years, more features have been added since its launch. It is easy to assign work collaboratively, where tasks are prioritized, and ideas shared as documents or email.
Thanks to its workflows, it is easy to manage different projects at a single time. It has an intuitive screen with a number of features like customizable queues, real time reporting to customers and automated request management.
Apart from that, Jira Agile allows for great product integration with other Atlassian tools like Stash enterprise, Git repository management and Bitbucket for unlimited private code responses. Right from project conception to launch, everything can be handled here. Jira Agile comes in several versions and the latest one conforms to the requests made by customers.
Companies like Square, Adobe, BNP Paribas, NASA, eBay, Cisco, LindkedIn, Salesforce, BMW use Jira Agile.
- Activ Collab If you are looking for agile project management, collaboration, customization, budgeting, tracking, notifications, resource managements, task management, learning and support, issue tracking apart from collaborating with clients for transparency, you are looking at the right solution here.
Each user in Activ Collab has his or her own unique dashboard where one can see their own work. Activ Collab helps you to track your working time so you can bill your clients accordingly. Harvard University, NASA, Ogilvy, Intel, Adobe and Apple are some of the companies using Activ Collab.
- Pivotal Tracker Pivotal Tracker is a tool designed by Pivotal Labs, a software development consultancy. As the tool can easily handle multiple projects, you would find this tool highly popular among users. The tool can be used for messaging, preparing and monitoring projects and creating turndown charts. Pivotal Tracker is well known for its feedback tools, making QA possible for all project undertakings.
Groupon, Sharethrough, GoSpotCheck, Accuweather are just a few of the companies that use Pivotal Tracker.
- CA Technologies CA Technologies (Previously known as Rally) is a cloud-based solution that helps software companies through the entire software development process. The aim is to shorten development cycles through dedicated agile techniques while enabling the teams spread across the globe to collaborate with each other seamlessly.
The tool helps you to reallocate development resources to help grow your portfolio. Various editions of the software are available for on-premise use. CA Technologies acquired Rally for $480 million in May 2015.
Intel, Cognizant, Capgemini, Sol, Choice Hotels,Getty Images, GE are just a few of the big names that use CA Technologies.
- SprintGround If you are not quite happy with the way your agile development is shaping up, then consider SprintGround. It helps developers to parse out projects and versions and manage releases. There is a specific framework in SprintGround that allows you to look at feature requests, customer requests and suggestions.
Bug tracking functionality is another feature of SprintGround. It is the best option for customer-driven product development as it is integrated with several traditional Scrum functions. Stacker, Croz Desk, and iT Meester use SprintGround
- Aha! Quite an interesting name for an agile development software! Aha! calls itself the world’s first product roadmap software that would help developers plan their business by shortening product cycles and improving user ranking. The best thing about Aha! is that you can integrate it with the applications that you already use.
Many of the big names are already users of Aha! like GitHub, Trello, Dropbox, Visual Studio, Google Apps and HipChat
- Yodiz Yodiz is an agile management platform that is easy to use, customizable when you want to plan and track several teams at one time.
Some of the best features of Yodiz are:
Product Backlog, where you can plan your backlog management through an online repository Sprints to help visualize, schedule and plan your sprints Releases to help you assign and prioritize the various functionalities and their releases Epics to help you channel your business requirements to a particular goal Real time collaboration with all the members of the team and so on Companies using Yodiz include Associated Press or AP, Checkout.com, Team Elena, Nokia, Satmetrix
Wrapping Up The best bet of agile development would be for small projects, which can be implemented quickly, because errors can be fixed quickly. As the development process with agile method is iterative, a project can be executed in shorter time frames.
We hope this article has brought some of the important tools in Agile product development. Of course, there are plenty more out there, so you need to find your best option, choosing the one that suits your requirements.
