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Agile On Demand designed to ease project management


By Jeff Feinman
March 6, 2009 — 
Serena Software is putting agile development into a software-as-a-service model with Agile On Demand, its agile project management software, made generally available on March 2.

René Bonvanie, senior vice president of marketing for Serena, said that transforming the people-oriented workflow processes into a computerized setting with Agile On Demand was a challenge. In a usual agile process, he noted, even removing a single sticky note could throw everything off.

“The No. 1 objection that people have against SCM tools in general is that it’s a tool,” Bonvanie said. “Developers hate tools. Anything that forces process or input, they hate. So we needed to build something that was computerized but super simple to use and very intuitively usable to people who are used to whiteboards.”

As a result, Serena came up with the “virtual wall,” where developers could switch between sprints and move requirements around. This wall that Agile On Demand provides lets developers track time and work status, allocate resources, and plan sprints. It provides acceptance test, unit test and build status reports.

Agile On Demand was created for catering to multiple agile teams. “It has a tree-like structure, similar to like you would see in a Microsoft product,” said Patchen Noelke, a senior product marketing manager with Serena. “You can organize multiple releases, organize team backlogs, and move requirements easily between them for planning. You can plan out products, releases and sprints.”

When asked why an agile team should drop a mature process that it has grown comfortable with and might have been using for years for software such as Agile On Demand, Bonvanie claimed that tooling, including spreadsheets and other forms of information gathering, have been “abysmal" in agile.

“What we see today is that application development is distributed and global, and people want to be much more predictable in how they build apps,” Bonvanie said.

“One of the reasons why people want to go agile is predictability not just in app dev, but [also] with the business. Agile helps with visibility and predictability, but only if you have the right tools that allow that information to be properly shared, and that was the theme for the software we released.”

Agile On Demand allows developers to set up RSS feeds and to talk via instant messaging. The software integrates with Serena’s Business Mashup platform. It also offers video instruction on common agile practices, along with over-the-phone coaching from a Serena representative.


Related Search Term(s): agile, Serena


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Comments

03/12/2009 02:38:54 PM EST

I wonder if Serena Software really understands why converting what is primarily a humans-interacting process into software was so challenging? The very first line of the Agile Manifesto states: "Individuals and interactions over processes and tools". Stating that Agile doesn't work unless you have the right tools doesn't exactly match up there.

United StatesJonathan House


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