JOLT Winner
Rally Enterprise (Rally Software)
(from left to right) Don Hazell, Zach Nies, and Steve Willcox
Reviewed by Jon Kurz
Rally Enterprise has claimed the top award for Project Management for a third straight year. With a solid lineup of features and a team dedicated to Agile development, Rally Enterprise is not simply a tool to manage projects; rather it is a true enterprise tool geared toward the lifecycle of large and small projects across multiple teams. One of the key strengths of Rally Enterprise is that it is not targeted toward any single group. It becomes a tool that can be used by developers, project managers, testers, and stakeholders alike. The dashboard is the center of activity. The layout is clear and well organized, providing information that is both qualitatively and quantitatively relevant, without unnecessary clutter. One of the key features is the available integration connectors. For developers, stories and tasks can be updated through their own IDE, such as Eclipse and VisualStudio. For project managers who use MS Project, there is also a connector to allow a familiar view of project metrics. There are many more connectors available for test automation and source control among others. The graphs and charts are well-designed and provide quick visuals into the overall status of projects. With an interface and set of features that adapts to the needs of Agile environments, teams can adopt Rally Enterprise as the tool to help them achieve their goals.
ResultSpace (Sapient)
Reviewed by Rick Wayne
In biology, organisms that failed to balance adaptation and adaptability are known as "fossils". The same is true with development tools, especially in the agile world: Overspecialization means rapid obsolescence, but overly general software doesn't necessarily give you the edge. Enter ResultSpace, a set of wiki tools born to streamline your ALM efforts. Project "stuff"--stories, defects, tasks, what have you--get captured in the wikis, with slick tools for cross-linking and adding supporting materials. Project charts and metrics (e.g., burndown charts) are built in, along with tools for iteration planning, managing your issues and accessing the version control system. It's wiki technology nicely adapted to development, but it's still endlessly adaptable.
TargetProcess On-Demand (TargetProcess)
Reviewed by Peter Westerman
Project Management tools are now an integral part of virtually every development project. TargetProcess distinguishes itself in a number of areas and is worth a look if: you are using Agile, or any development methodology that has you doing frequent builds, iterations and releases; want to discipline your business stakeholders to properly submit requirements into the engineering process; or need integrated test case management and integration with popular version control tools. TP is a hosted web application, making it worthy of consideration for distributed teams. TP is not the most full-featured or elegantly designed product in this category, but it stands out by providing a serviceable set of tools that you can easily customize to suit your team's needs. Perhaps best of all, once configured you and your team spend a minimal amount of time managing the tool itself and can focus on using it to complete your project. A user interface overhaul would be nice, but as it is TP gets the job done at reasonable cost.
TeamCity (JetBrains)
Reviewed by Mike Riley
Plenty of solutions exist that address the interdependent complexities associated with continuous integration, but few have the insight and build management features that TeamCity supplies Java and .NET developers. In addition to delivering the expected access management security considerations and monitoring of builds, TeamCity can deliver code coverage statistics and build status (even while builds are running) via useful, information-rich charts, email notifications and even RSS feeds. It supports the JUnit, NAnt, Nunit and TestNG testing frameworks, can connect to a number of version control systems and integrate with Eclipse, Microsoft Visual Studio and JetBrains' own IntelliJ IDEA.
