I’m not a huge believer in tools for tools sake. And, I’m really not a big believer in big tools for project management, especially when you’re going Agile. However, since we started scrumming, we have been using spreadsheets to manage our product, project, release, and sprint backlogs. As our projects grew and our team embraced Scrum, our spreadsheets became increasingly complex. We were using Excel to not only create backlogs, but also to create “executive” dashboards, developer dashboards, team utilization reports, actual time keeping for tasks, etc. The spreadsheets were turning into a relational database of sorts…and they were getting unwieldy. While the team was really enjoying what we had created in Excel, the ScrumMaster (that’s me), was working behind the scenes to “manage” the spreadsheets. It was taking a few hours every Sprint just to update the spreadsheets, create the correct linkages, generate the reports, etc. In addition, as we tried to link multiple projects across Excel workbooks for utilization reports, timekeeping, and other assorted TPS type reports, things grew even more complex.
So, we thought, “We’re a group of developers, let’s turn this into an application.” I sketched out a database schema for the back-end and started putting together estimates for building our own custom solution. At the same time, I began evaluating COTS solutions. I looked at several vendors’ products. Some were desktop applications and others were web apps. When I finished my evaluation, it looked like our costs to design, develop, and implement our own solution were easily going to be in the six-digit range. Now, we work for a consulting firm and internal R&D/dev projects don’t usually get funded at that level. So, we turned our sights back to the COTS products and did a more rigorous evaluation. We narrowed the field down to two solutions and trialed them both for a month. At the end of the trial, it was clear that Rally Software had the solution that fit our team the best.
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