Are you stuck with an Agile planning tool that is clunky and dictates rather than facilitates process? Are you thinking about divorce? There are many reasons to migrate to Helix Plan (formerly Hansoft). In this article well discuss 6 of the most common.
1. Manage the Big Picture
In Helix Plan, users are able to visualize how their team's work fits into the big picture of a project or program. This is key for organizations that want to empower development teams, support collaboration, and enable innovation that adds to the overall product value.
Most Agile tools have very limited support for adding structure to product backlogs. This generates backlogs with long, flat lists of items that you apply filters on to visualize what you are interested in. Large-scale Agile practitioners using competing products complain that a couple of times a day, they find themselves having 20 filters running on separate tabs. They get lost, close them all and have to start over. The filtered information has value in itself, but it is hard to understand context.
You should be able to navigate without thinking in a tool. When you can, individuals and teams are able to optimize towards higher goals and objectives without getting stuck on local optimizations.
2. Embedded Business Intelligence
No two organizations have the same need for decisions and metrics. Helix Plan's powerful and flexible Business Intelligence enables users to navigate their road to success with confidence. Customized dashboards track the metrics important to your team and can be updated as you learn. The pre-made widgets in other Agile tools tend to capture standard metrics for flow and iteration based methods, but flexibility and customization of graphs are necessary for anyone demanding maximum insight from their Agile data.
3. Methods Side by Side
Scrum, Kanban, Waterfall, Scrumban. In reality, most organizations are not evangelists for a single method but choose to mix a number of them. With Helix Plan, you can allow for different methods, side-by-side or interlinked, within the same project (even mixing Gantt with Agile), but still have everyone collaborating to meet the same milestone. Regardless of method, progress can be tracked across teams and features can be pulled from a joint backlog.
4. Continuous Improvement
Just like your company should be Agile and responsive to sudden changes in the market, your ways of working should be allowed to continuously improve. Helix Plan never dictates your process but believes in providing flexibility to allow Agile practices to mature. You don't need to be a specialist to customize and change. You can do it on the fly, anytime, anywhere in the organization.
5. Speed
Compared to Helix Plan, other Agile tools are clunky. Lots of clicks are required to make updates and changes, and each click often involves multiple seconds of waiting time. Clunky-ness and frustrating wait times can cause infrequent status updates and reluctance from managers to introduce appropriate changes to the program.
Helix Plan is like video game in terms of speed, and therefore appreciated by developers as it demands a minimum of administration to update the status of their work. This results in up-to-date and accurate reports that managers can rely on for decision making. The minimal effort required for making changes in Helix Plan, such as grooming the backlog or altering a workflow enables the manager to keep the priorities and processes in the system reflecting reality.
6. Value for Money
Competing Agile tools often hide their actual cost with low license fees and extra charges for crucial plug-ins and support services. Helix Plan's customers enjoy the full feature set and state-of-the-art first line support without additional cost. Helix Plan's support team are experts not only in the product, but in Agile methods and software development in general. In addition, we provide customers access to coaches with deep Agile expertise and industry specific experience. Helix Plan's mission to make our customers more successful goes beyond just providing a great tool. We believe that support, coaching and advisory is a natural part of the product and should be accessible to all our customers.
Back to topBringing It All Together
Choosing a new tool to manage your product or projects is a difficult task. With Helix Plan, you get the flexibility, speed, and support you need to stay on track.
And it's free for 5 users.