Agile Tools

A few notes on this list:

I tried to collect just the tools that are written specifically for the purpose of Agile planning. I know that a lot of teams use 3×5 cards and/or Excel for tracking and managing their projects. However, although you can use Excel to manage your planning process, Excel was not created with Agile planning in mind. So Excel doesn’t belong on this list. There are plenty of planning products that make the claim of being compatible with Agile planning. For instance, Microsoft Project has a Scrum plug-in. But MS Project was never really intended to support Agile planning. And if I may be so bold, the support it does provide sucks. So I have left out products that are basically Gant charting tools that some might consider using for planning Agile projects.

This list is by no means comprehensive. If you are aware of additional products that I have missed, please let me know. So here they are in no particular order:

1. Rally
2. Scrumworks
3. XPlanner
4. Mingle
5. VersionOne
6. TargetProcess
7. xProcess
8. Extreme Planner
9. ProjectCards
10. CardMeeting
11. XP Story Studio
12. PlanningPoker
13. Acunote
14. SilverCatalyst
15. PlanB

I learned a few things researching this list. First, everybody and their cat has a planning tool these days. It was only a few years ago that there were only a handful of products available if you were interested in a tool for planning Agile projects. Now they are a dime a dozen. It’s starting to look like a pretty competitive market. There still seems to be a healthy mix of open source and commercial applications, so alternatives are available to fit whatever budget you have (or don’t have).

I’ve provided some minimal information with each product so that you can investigate them yourself. For those of you who want the “Cliff’s Notes” summary, over the next few weeks my plan is to write reviews for these products. Some of them are products that I have used before quite extensively, others I will install and try out.

Stay tuned.