COMPARISON STUDY BETWEEN AGILEFANT AND XPLANNER PLUS Professor Daniel Amyot Ruijun Fan Badr Alsubaihi Submitted to Professor Daniel Amyot in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the course CSI 5112 (Software Engineering)

Outline Business Context Study Plan High Impact Criteria Low Impact Criteria Results Conclusion

Introduction about Agile Methods "Agile" is an umbrella term used to describe a variety of methods that encourage continual realignment of development goals with the needs and expectations of the customer. Agile Methods are a reaction to traditional ways of developing software. Agile Methods are actually a collection of different techniques (or practices) that share the same values and basic principles.

Business Context Software Development Company. Main Business: Insourcing Projects ( two to six month long projects). Number of Employees: 2 teams (4 developers) and a Projects Manager. Development Technique: Incremental Development Methods (Agile). The purpose of this study: Select an Agile management tool that fits our company’s needs from the head manager to all employs.

Study Plan Minimal Requirements: The two selected tools must meet these criteria to be under evaluation. High Impact Criteria: It is out of ten and reflects the need of this criterion in our company. Low Impact Criteria: It is out of five and reflects how much this criterion can improve and facilitate our work.

Minimal Requirements  Cost: As a small company, open source and free Agile tools has the highest priority.  Compatible Running Environment: Operating System: Windows 7. Database: to be designed in MySQL.  Active Life Cycle: By looking at previous releases and how much improvements have been done in between.

Minimal Requirements Criteria\ToolIceScrumAgilefantAgiloXplanner+ CostFree (5) Free (5) $1500/year (2) Free (5) PlatformHSQL (3) Windows + MYSQL (5) Web-based (4) Windows + MYSQL (5) Life CycleActive (4) Active (4) Active (5) Active (4) Scores

Agilefant and Xplanner plus Agilefant It is developed by Software Business and Engineering Institute (SoberIT) at Helsinki University of Technology.  System Requirements: OS: (tested on Windows, Apple OS and Linux) Java (Sun jdk 1.5, 1.6,) Application server: Tomcat 5.5, 6.0, or 7.0 RAM at least 512M for Tomcat. Database: MySQL 5. Browser: (Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome). Many problems on Microsoft Internet Explorer. Score (9) Xplanner-plus It is commonly used and based on Xplanner, which had a large user base and was the primary tool on the market.  System Requirements: OS: (tested on Linux and Windows). Java (Sun jdk 1.5, 1.6, openjdk 6). Application server: Tomcat 5.5, 6.0; jetty 5. RAM at least 512M for Tomcat. Database: HSQLDB, MySQL. Browser: Any. Score (10)

High Impact Criteria: Usability Agilefant 1. Ease of Installation: (3 hours) 1. Requires little training. 2. Does not affect other installed programs. 2. User Interfaces: easy to understand and simple in a reasonable way. Score (9) Xplanner plus 1. Ease of Installation: (2 hours) 1. Does not require training. 2. Does not affect other installed programs. 2. User Interfaces: very simple and straightforward but requires many clicks to perform simple action. Score (9)

High Impact Criteria: Documentation Agilefant 1) The installation documentation is sufficient. 2) The user guide: uses wiki. It is very clear and can be used for training. 3) Support: 1) The Forum: very active ( with 141 topics). 2) The effective responses. Score (8) Xplanner-plus 1) The installation documentation is brief. 2) The user guide: We are sorry to admit that there isn't much in term of user documentation. However, the tool is intuitive enough that little documentation is needed. 3) Support: 1) The Forum: does not have. 2) The effective responses. Score (6)

High Impact Criteria: Functionality Agilefant 1) Manager: 1) Provides most of Microsoft Project features. 2) Set Project Roles. 3) Nice Dashboard. 4) Portfolio management. 5) Tracking: 1) Built-In-Time Tracking- System. 2) Effort Spent. 6) Communications with teams: 1) Set up automatic Reminders. 2) s. 7) Generate Reports: (web page or Excel). Roadmap Reports.

High Impact Criteria: Functionality Xplanner-plus 1) Manager: 1) Provides most of Microsoft Project features. 2) Set Project Roles. 3) Dashboard (Promising) 4) Tracking: 1) Online time tracking and time sheet generation. 2) Effort Spent can not be according to users. 5) Communications with teams: 1) s. 2) Virtual note cards 6) Generate and export Reports: ( XML, MS Project, Excel ).

High Impact Criteria: Functionality Agilefant 1) Developers:  Supports prioritization.  Has Product Backlog.  Personal work queue  Can clearly see what other developers is planning to do  Nice Graphical presentation. Xplanner-plus 1) Developers:  Support TWiki-style text formatting.  Support external tool integration and extensible wiki word linking.  Drag and Drop stories to next iteration.  attach notes to stories and tasks.  Multi-select options for actions.

High Impact Criteria: Functionality Agilefant Manager: 4 out 4 Developer: 5 out 6 Score (9) Xplanner-plus Manager: 3 out of 4 Developer: 5 out 6 Score (8)

High Impact Criteria: Performance Agilefant Although it is rich of features, it has a high performance and responds to project’s changes. Score (9) Xplanner-plus Sometimes, it has a bug on a main feature which is reporting. Score (7)

Low Impact Criteria: Suitability Agilefant Performs well on large teams. As result, it performs well on large projects too. Score (5) Xplanner-plus It is painful to use it for more than 20 people. As a result, it is hard to use it for managing large projects. Score (3)

Low Impact Criteria: Stability Agilefant Sometimes it crashes when using secondary features but it is rich of features. Score (4) Xplanner-plus it is very rear to crash. Score (5)

Low Impact Criteria: Scalability Agilefant It could collect and efficiently display Large amounts of data. Score (5) Xplanner-plus It is slower when dealing with large amounts of data and many users. Score (3)

Results High Impact Criteria CriterionAgilefantXplanner-plus Minimal Requirements 910 Usability 99 Documentation 86 Functionality 98 Performance 87 Total Scores 4340 Low Impact Criteria CriterionAgilefantXplanner-plus Suitability53 Stability45 Scalability53 Total Scores 1411

CONCLUSION Agilefant is a simple but it is very capable tool and a powerful solution. It brings together the perspectives of organizing daily work, long-term product and release planning and project portfolio management. We would recommend using Agilefant over xplanner- plus.

Thank You Questions ?