A couple of weeks ago, I was doing an evaluation of the many Agile Lifecycle management tools in the market for a customer of mine. I was pleasantly surprised to see the various options that an organization would have when they are looking for one.

Before we go further, let us define it. An Agile Lifecycle Management (ALM) tool is one which helps to manage your company’s Agile product development by providing a way to manage requirements, day to day work and progress reporting.

The first question that first comes to mind is “Do we need a tool to manage Agile product development?”
Well, if your team, your product owner and other interested stakeholders are co-located, there definitely is no need for an Agile Lifecycle management tool. A whiteboard, sticky notes, a chart paper for the burndown and a dedicated scrum master who keeps all this in good condition is sufficient enough. However, in today’s corporate world, the distributed product development scenario is one where a team, its product owner, other stakeholders and sometimes the Scrum Master are spread in different geographical locations across the world. For all such distributed product development environments, there definitely is a need for an ALM tool. Continue reading →