I was studying the tool stack for Visualizing Large Product Development flow.
I am researching this tool which will be used for 3-4 Agile Release trains(approx 400-500 team members) and this tool should be able to give an integrated view of the whole program.?
I am also seeking at what value tools will bring into Large Product Development?
I was studying cost-benefit analysis as well.
To start with, I have started to list down what the organization requires from the tool to deploy large product development & Execution, at each level, everyone should be able to get visibility and the ability to control the end-to-end workflow.
Team Level visibility: As a User like Team members, Product Owner, Scrum Masters I would like to find from the tool below
- Do we have any tools which can help us to visualize?at the team level? JIRA/TFS/...?
- Team level tool, can we have a Product Backlog which can be prioritized and estimated easily?
- Can we capture acceptance criteria, feedback, etc. into the story items? Can we customize based on our needs?
- Can we configure the tool for various start dates and end dates for Sprint duration?
- Can we pick up the items from Product Backlog and push these items into the sprint planning board?
- Can we do capacity planning through these tools for a sprint ( maybe Hrs, Story points, etc)?
- The team should be able to add user stories with estimation, Link the tasks with the user story, and able to fill the remaining hrs. in the tasks.
- Can we find if the team is overloaded or under-loaded? Can we see the burn-down chart and some more reports?
- Can we configure various phases of the sprint?
- Can we add or delete team members for a story or task? Can we add or change the story link, etc.? Can we modify the workflow easily?
- Do we have a mechanism to query the data based on the field we have for the scrum team?
Multiple Interconnect team Level (Program Level): As a User like Program Managers, Business Owner, Product Manager, System Architect, I would like to find below
- Can the same tool be configured at multiple interconnected team level?
- Can we create multiple scrum teams? with the same product backlog?
- Can we create Feature and connect user stories? Can we view the report about the progress?
- Can we configure a Kanban board at the Feature level, multiple Feature team view and their progress? Customize for hierarchy view?
- Can we write a query/filter to fetch specific information at multiple team level interconnected information? Save those filters, and share those with others?
- Can we configure the dashboard with all the various types of view?
- Can we connect this planning board with document repositories. code base, Build system, Test tools etc?
- Can we take a dump from one tool to another and integrate it? Import-export from files to the tool is possible?
- Flexibility to use add-ins, Plugins?
- Performance issue with the tool when we have mutilple users logging in? Can we scale?
Visibility and manage at portfolio Level: As a User like Portfolio Manager, Enterprise Architect, I would like to find below
- Can the same tool Map Epic, Feature and User story and show the same in Kanban board?
- Can we configure various Release Train and Sprint start date and end date?
- Can we Tag Value stream with Epic? A tag could be Architecture or Business related
- Can we push all these data in Kanban board based on some Query? Kanban board should be able to display the status of each release item?
- Can we Trace Epic with Feature and Feature with Stories? Should be able to generate EPIC progress report and decide to invest or pivot?
- The team should be able to manage the dependency among the features, user stories? We should be able to mark what type of dependency each work item has with others? e.g Predecessor and successor, parent-child, etc
- The team should be able to add Risk as a work item into the tool to track?
- Should be able to query and extract the report related to the Budget against each value stream?
- Should be able to view % Progress report for each Value stream or Epic level. Ability to Visualize all these reports and flow?
- Should be able to review and capture feedback within the same tool?
With any role, Business Owner, Product Manager, Release Train Engineer this tool should be able to create visibility for all of them.We should look for a tool that can fulfill all the needs at a moderate price level.
All these pictures should be able to drive us to alignment, bringing all the parties on one page.
Are you asking the right questions when you use the tool? Are you extensively able to use the tool to drive the collaboration work to happen?
Will all the stakeholders be able to be happy by using this tool to bring visibility and confidence at all levels?
What is your experience with such a tool which is used by 500 team members to get one integrated picture of development progress??
