Those who adopt Agile practices sometimes tend to interpret the “Individuals and Interactions over processes and tools” in the Agile manifesto to mean that Agile software development does not require any defined set of tools. While the Agile movement does not necessarily endorse any tools, there are several tools that have evolved in recent years which better support Agile efforts.

As Agile teams manage their work differently, they typically need a different set of tools to support their agile approaches. Simple and adhoc tools like index cards and spreadsheets for requirements management and prioritization, wikis for collaborative documentation, commercial or opensource project management and bug tracking tools are usually sufficient for small, co-located teams. However, when teams and projects get larger and Agile methods need to be scaled up, integrated tools become useful.

New agile project and product management tools enable better coordination and collaboration between the various teams involved in the agile process (development, customer support, marketing, management, customers, etc) and also provide better reporting capabilities. Some of these tools even include requirements management, test and defect management and integration with development, test and build environments. They can bring about further improvement and acceleration of existing agile processes.

X-planner, RallyDev, VersionOne, TargetProcess, Yoxel and Mingle are some available Agile project management tools. .NET shops can also consider using MS team SCRUM plug-in for its agile project management functionalities. Some of these tools require you to spend time learning to use it initially while others allow easy integration with existing tools. Finding and using the tools that are well-integrated, facilitate meaningful interaction between your different teams and give more visibility can ultimately help you produce better software faster.

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