Introducing SoftAgile™ from JamBuster.... or "Why one more Agile Tool?" as an ALM analyst asked.

We at JamBuster Team are very proud to introduce our new Agile Tool, SoftAgile™, over next week!!!

SoftAgile™ was born in a very counter intuitive way.

In 2014, we saw that to build an application required using multiple ALM tools: product or backlog definition tool, project planning, sprint & task management, testing, defect & issue management, release management along with integrations to IDE and SCM tools. It is almost like a ALM quilt made of patchwork of tools!

One of the big challenges with such patchy ALM is that you have to keep on switching between different tools, and thus an integrated view of the project is almost impossible.

So we envisioned an end-to-end agile ALM platform that will have five modules: define product, plan program, develop software, verify quality & customer support. We named it SoftALM^®

We got lot of interest from a software product companies to become our beta partners. And their feedback started to bring polish to our vision of SoftALM^®.

And then it stuck to us that the SoftALM^® is most suitable to either Software Product companies or those who build applications for their businesses and customers, like insurance, banking or e-retailer. The focus here is developing software as a product.

The feedback from our software services beta partner, was of course, by now understandable. They felt SoftALM^® was a bit too product centric for their use.

Service companies and start-ups suggested could we change the focus more to project and customer?

This meant almost taking out product axis and replacing it with customer, project and application focus. This was the birth of SoftAgile™. It is thus counter intuitive that we would built a big Agile ALM platform for product focus, and then carved out a smaller application from it. Of course, SoftAgile™ therefore benefitted from instant enterprise scalability.

Turned out, the SoftALM^® was built so logically that it's transformation to SoftAgile™ was swift. We took about 15 months to build SoftALM^®. SoftAgile™ took only 2 months to be carved out!

So you can see why we built these two tools!

1. To tailor each agile tool as per product (SoftALM^®) vs project (SoftAgile™) focus of end users.
2. To provide integrated applications that provides end-to-end capabilities for either of these end user groups.
3. To provide tighter integration between ALM attributes, that reduces rework and provide total visibility across product and project axes.

Well, when was the last time an Agile ALM software gave you a dashboard that combined your entire project work flow, like our DashFlow™ - the project dashboard in SoftAgile™? This is how we saw integration working for you.

During these 2 years, we discovered an another view of iterative agile-namely improving software through feedback over multiple early and many releases... more like crafting software!!!!

So now you can unleash the power of your agile team to craft your next great software withSoftAgile™!

Take a tour of our SoftAgile™.

One month to go for the SoftALM launch!

Here at JamBuster, we are very exhilarated as we are speeding towards the commercial release! It has been a month since we launched the Beta version of SoftALM.

By 2011, we had commercialized our in-house project portfolio management tool GDE. By 2013, we were looking for an affordable tool to integrated management of requirements, test cases and defects. When we could not, we saw it as an opportunity to build on our in-house tool these ALM capabilities. Our outsourcing development experience, research on available tools and customer feedbacks on GDE tool, helped us get clarity on what features an ALM tool should essentially have. We named our ALM tool – ‘SoftALM’ for software application lifecycle management.

The Agile methodology, over this time, became a ‘go-to’ strategy for majority of project teams around the globe. For our team. journey of transforming to be truly Agile began 8 months ago. Our team was quick to jump the “Agile” train, as the Agile methodology coincided with our set of principles and practices. Agile practice brought a sense of ownership and empowerment to each team member through interactions to get things ‘Done’! As believers in early involvement of customer, we started talking to them early and got their feedback through alpha and beta candidates. So now we appreciate why Agile philosophy recommends short release cycles. Of course, with our team becoming Agile, SoftALM which started as an ALM tool, quickly turned into an agile ALM tool.

Thus, adopting agile principles was not the most difficult task. Whereas, developing an ALM tool with Agile principles incorporated in it, required some serious analysis, constant conversations with customers and of course, hard-work! Our team and SoftALM have evolved over four internal iterations of software over the past 8 months. After incorporating beta feedback, we are a month away from commercial release slated in early January!

This experience has helped us develop a keen understanding of how to transform to agile especially when years are spent following Waterfall practices. We incorporated all the learnings in SoftALM! Thus SoftALM accommodates both methodologies and takes you through the Agile transformation in a painless way. We endeavor to stand by you through this transformation and make SoftALM your tool to win over agile!

Trying a Free Demo of this software would be a great way to see it yourself: Check it out!

Why & what should Executives know about ALM?

Software product and services companies executives are involved in envisioning, developing, marketing and selling software or services around it. Here is why ALM needs their executive championship!

ALM provides a framework for managing application lifecycle as namesake.  It essentially begins with customer feedback or requests on some capabilities or techno or marketing realizing an opportunity to automate some processes or improving current capabilities, essentially to develop a new software application.  The Marketing team or like then conceptualizes the product as features and requirements, most times working externally with customers, internally with technology and customer support to define value proposition or differentiation.  Design and development iterations follow. Verification team then traces behavior of the software against requirements laid out.  The defects, improvements are done and software is released to customers. Customers use it, report functional defects and usability challenges. These gets fixed and released, with newer features in next iteration of the cycle.

This application lifecycle thus requires many shake hands across multi-functional team, involves numerous qualitative situations with go / no-go decisions, and even when some data is available it makes sources of challenges. This if not managed well, can act as serious stress causing agents for your team and at worst result into a fractured team that can go pear-shaped at delivering a quality software on time and under budget. 

A well-defined ALM can provide framework for managing application lifecycle as namesake while facilitating the use of software tool for visibility and transparency, application of standards for each phase of lifecycle and result into efficient quality development. 

Executives are best suited to champion the need for developing, implementing and continuous improvement of an ALM framework that defines roles and responsibilities, empowers the team and brings focus on quality delivery, on time and under budget.

Current SoftALM combines JamBuster's experience of starting from waterfall software development lifecycle model, trying to use it with teams on multiple continents, and then moving to agile philosophy.  We then tried using tapestry of commercial applications to find out, they only partially covered ALM needs. Hence we began developing a flavor of application lifecycle management model, best practices and software tools that leverage agile for software enterprises.

SoftALM from JamBuster provides a process framework, best practices and the single tool for end-to-end management of the process with complete visibility.  The SoftALM process model focuses on creating a dream team that has ownership, deep knowledge of their products and pride in their expertise and work.  The processes, best practices and software tool are optimized to facilitate a predictive, high quality software delivery with in budget and on time! What more can we ask for in an ALM software?