Leading a team comprised of three former teams means that we have three of everything.  Three places to gather requirements, three (actually eight or nine) places for customers to submit support requests, three places to plan and track work.

We’ve been looking into tools that combine these features into a single product.  Not just Agile planning tools, but those that allow us to look in a single place for requirements, work items, and reports.

One of the interesting choices is Software Planner by Automated QA (the makers of Test Complete).  It's a lovely tool with real end-to-end process support.  We’re probably not going to use it for one reason – cost.  I’m sure our company could get a discount, but it’s on a concurrent user license that isn’t cheap for a large number of users.  Some initial guesswork had us paying over $6,000 for 3 concurrent users just to get started with the Enterprise version.  Still, it’s intuitive, has great Agile capabilities, and has a reputation for excellent customer support.

At the moment we’re digging deeper into Rational Team Concert by IBM.  Reading the docs on this product makes me want to submit my resume to Big Blue.  Not only does RTC integrate everything we need, but it’s free for up to 10 developers.  It has beautiful support for all phases of Scrum.  We’re going to bring the sales representative in for a demo.

This marks one of the few times that we’re trying to resist the temptation to write our own tool.  And I think this is the first time that something so complex may actually be capably provided by an external source.   Hooray for less work!

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