Agile is not just a methodology, it is a way of life. Most organisations have either shifted to agile or are in a process of adopting agile not only for IT but for other functions as well. The development requirements coming from all over the organisation have made the whole project management world more complex. Sprint Planning and Story prioritisation have become a challenge.
ServiceNow has come up with a product called "Agile Development V2" to address these issues which helps organisations by implementing a purely agile approach over the entire life cycle of a product, or a hybrid approach using agile methods within a traditional project structure. By using Agile Development 2.0 organisations can manage to have a centralised and comprehensive backlog that can be used for both release-based and project-based deliveries. We can maintain all the backlog at a centralised place and associate the stories to a project, a product, or both.
User Stories are one of the important foundations of an agile program that help in providing a framework which is end-user focused and facilitates collaboration, creativity, and a better overall output. Agile 2.0 enables us to add prerequisite and dependent items for these stories so that we can visualize these dependencies on the scrum planning board and plan our sprints accordingly.
We can create filters to define which stories appear in our backlog. Also, we can create any number of personal backlogs that match different priorities.
Agile Board is available in Agile 2.0 to manage the product backlog from a centralized location. We can add stories here to a personalized backlog and prioritize them as needed.
Sprint Planning tab of the Agile board helps in streamlining the sprint activities such as creating, editing, and completing sprints.
Further, we can create individual sprints or in bulk using Agile 2.0. and arrange the stories according to the priority by reordering them in the Backlog or any of the sprint sections.
Then there is Story Board to help us track the progress of the stories from the current sprint. There is a visual task board that provides the visibility of the state of stories and their transition from one state (lane) to another. In addition to this there are OOB reports and dashboards available which help to get the clear overview of the development state.
We at Coforge have gained expertise in utilising these features and provide a value-added Agile process to our customers.
The latest example is a UK hospitality giant facing challenges in managing their product enhancements and improvement initiatives because of the lack of management of stories created for achieving them.
Coforge utilised this application in the customer environment where the customer could create their stories and manage them in a more efficient way. Story prioritisation and Sprint planning was streamlined. Dashboards and reports made the whole project management process more transparent which made it easy for the management and the product owners to take decisions and get them implemented in a more effective way with quicker turnarounds.
To achieve the goal of an effective and successful project delivery, the strength of platform like ServiceNow and what they offer to enable Agile delivery must be fully recognized. Coforge, with its extensive experience in delivering complex projects and a well established ServiceNow capability, can help turn your projects into a success story.