October 15, 2009, 9:32 AM — CollabNet is increasing focus on agile software development methodologies in a release of its CollabNet TeamForge application lifecycle management platform being announced on Thursday.
The 5.3 release of the product addresses agile development through a Dynamic Planning capability, providing a unified interface for managing project scope and timeline. The interface, which functions similarly to Windows Explorer, offers a product management feature tree to track the scope of development and a planning tree to track development backlogs and time boxes.
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"Dynamic Planning is specifically designed for agile development, and we've taken a number of concepts that are used in the real agile development world, such as being able to manage scope and features from the same screen and do reporting on that as well," said Victoria Griggs, CollabNet senior director of product marketing.
Any item of arbitrary scope, such as a task or defect, can be mapped to an arbitrary backlog or time box, such as a product, release, iteration, or team. The interface thus provides a centrally visible agile plan, CollabNet said. A burndown charting capability is offered on every level of the hierarchy, the company said.
Also featured in the release is a best-practices agile development template for teams to quickly start a project based on agile development methodologies while still enabling use of other methodologies. The customizable template features defined tracker types, such as stories and tasks, as well a set of agile roles for managing project membership. Process guidance is included as well.
Deployable either via cloud computing or a user's own site, TeamForge offers both a Web-based interface and IDE support for Windows, Eclipse, and Visual Studio. Version 5.3 is due in December. Pricing for TeamForge starts at $3,000 per year.
This story, "CollabNet boosts agile development in latest TeamForge release," was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Follow the latest developments in application development at InfoWorld.com.
