greenhopper product overview

By Atlassian Following is an officially unofficial high-level overview of the Atlassian Greenhopper agile development tool. More details (as in official videos, screenshots, case studies, documentation etc.) can be found here: http://www.atlassian.com/agile/ http://www.atlassian.com/software/greenhopper/ http://www.atlassian.com/software/greenhopper/customers.jsp http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/GH/GreenHopper+Documentation

ContentsAgile Development ........................................................................................................................................ 2 Virtual index cards ................................................................................................................................ 2 Get started with one click ..................................................................................................................... 2 Agile development must be.. agile! ...................................................................................................... 3 Integrate with the tools you use ........................................................................................................... 3 Scrum for Iterations ...................................................................................................................................... 3 Capture user stories and epics .............................................................................................................. 4 Prioritize your backlog .......................................................................................................................... 4 Plan sprints within your release............................................................................................................ 4 Track and monitor progress .................................................................................................................. 4 Kanban - Optimizing your flow ..................................................................................................................... 5 Optimize your team's development process ........................................................................................ 5 Release when you're ready ................................................................................................................... 5 Scrumban: the best of both worlds ...................................................................................................... 5 Backlog Management ................................................................................................................................... 6 Drag and drop prioritization on virtual card wall...................................................................................... 6 Building your backlogs .......................................................................................................................... 6 Drag and drop prioritization ................................................................................................................. 6 Sprint Planning .............................................................................................................................................. 7 Drag and drop iteration planning ............................................................................................................. 7 Estimating user stories and technical tasks .......................................................................................... 7 Setting up iterations.............................................................................................................................. 7 Planning a sprint ................................................................................................................................... 8 Task and Time Tracking ................................................................................................................................. 8GreenHopper Agile Project Management Page 1

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Focus on the task at hand ......................................................................................................................... 8 Check the task board ............................................................................................................................ 8 Capturing time as you work .................................................................................................................. 9 Charts and Reporting .................................................................................................................................... 9 Burndown, burnup and value charts ........................................................................................................ 9 Dynamic burndown and burnup charts ................................................................................................ 9 Monitor trends and improve estimate accuracy .................................................................................. 9

Agile DevelopmentGreenHopper adds agile project management to JIRA to easily manage user stories, requirements and development tasks in the same place you track bugs. Since it is built upon JIRA technology including custom workflows & permissions, OpenSocial gadgets and JQL, GreenHopper is a truly agile tool that adapts to your development process.

Virtual index cardsGreenHopper renders all issues in JIRA as virtual index cards making it easy to see what's going on in JIRA. Similar to a traditional card wall, colour-coded cards are organized onto planning and task boards to visualize issues and help prioritize backlogs, plan for iterations and track development tasks. This is especially great for distributed teams.

Creating cards is fast and easy with key fields pre-populated based on the current board making GreenHopper ideal for gathering requirements, user stories, epics or any other tasks during planning meetings. User stories created as part of an epic will also inherit relevant details.

Virtual index cards allow developers to quickly comment on, flag, log work and drag and drop cards to the relevant version or component.

Get started with one clickAdding GreenHopper to an existing project in JIRA is simple with built-in project templates. The template automatically creates the necessary custom fields and issue types in JIRA and defines the style and layout of each card type. For example, the Scrum template creates fields to handle rank and story points in order to manage Epics, Stories and Technical Tasks.

GreenHopper Agile Project Management

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By Atlassian Obviously, no two projects are run exactly the same way. That's why multiple custom project templates can be created with different fields and issues types to match the processes of your various teams.

Agile development must be.. agile!GreenHopper is ideally suited for teams practicing Scrum, but truly agile development teams are constantly improving their processes and they need a planning tool that is flexible enough to evolve with them.

Since GreenHopper is built on JIRA, the fields on each card are configurable within a project. Determine exactly what to display on each of the Summary, Card and List views within the planning and task board. Configure personal user preferences and shareable contexts to see just the data you need.

GreenHopper also adheres to the underlying JIRA workflow allowing customisation of steps and transitions to fit your development process. Teams practicing elements of Kanban, or Lean development, can also apply constraints to each workflow step in order to identify bottlenecks in the process and ultimately optimize the flow of development.

Integrate with the tools you useJIRA works closely with other Atlassian development tools to provide context and visibility to what the entire team is working on. Practicing collective code ownership? FishEye for JIRA reveals the true progress of your stories by showing all related commits as well as code-level statistics for each iteration. Practicing continuous integration? JIRA's Bamboo integration shows which builds are related to which stories, allowing you to see exactly which successful build includes the result of a given story or iteration. Practicing code review or pair programming? Integrated Crucible code reviews allow you to ensure four eyes have seen every piece of code written and search for issues which are yet to be peer reviewed.

Developers rarely have to leave their development workbench to access any of these tools when using the Atlassian IDE Connectors for either Eclipse, IntelliJ IDEA or Visual Studio.

Scrum for IterationsScrum is an iterative, incremental framework for agile software development. Whether you are a certified Scrum Master or just getting started with some agile concepts, GreenHopper GreenHopper Agile Project Management Page 3

By Atlassian turns JIRA into the ideal Scrum planning tool for managing your backlog, planning sprints and tracking your entire release.

Capture user stories and epicsThe built-in Scrum project template adds all the necessary fields and issues to JIRA for practicing Scrum.

Create cards to capture user stories along with estimated story points. Story points are just one way to indicate the relative effort needed to implement the story. Some teams may use hours or some other unit of measure.

For larger, more complex stories, create epics which aggregate several smaller user stories and assign them a business value. Some epics potentially span multiple releases.

Prioritize your backlogManage product, release and sprint backlogs using the planning board. View cards within a project by either assignee, component or version (sprint) to triage incoming issues. Sort cards by any field and drag them up and down in the list to prioritize. Ensure the entire team is looking at the same list by creating shareable contexts to filter and highlight the cards in the backlog using a combination of JIRA filters or custom criteria.

Plan sprints within your releaseThe planning board is perfect for sprint and release planning. Create versions to represent overall release and each of the sprints within it. Set the team's capacity for upcoming sprint and break down the top user stories into technical tasks to determine how much can be accomplished within the iteration. Use version summary details and statistical markers to guide the planning process. Slice and dice cards on the planning board by any attribute to ensure the right features are built into your release.

Track and monitor progressThe task board provides a simple, virtual wall board for the team to manage the collective and individual "to do" lists for the current sprint. The configurable swim lanes map to JIRA workflows allowing developers to indicate what they are working on by simply dragging cards from one column to another. They can also log the hours spent on each task to help track progress throughout the sprint. Real-time burndown charts are available on the chart board as well as in gadgets on the JIRA Dashboard. Additional reports allow the team to track vital statistics throughout the sprint for use in retrospective meetings as well as future iteration planning sessions.


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Kanban - Optimizing your flowAlthough the concept of Kanban has been around for years, it's use for agile software development teams is relatively new compared to Scrum. Also known as Lean Development, the application of proven best practices from the manufacturing industry can have a positive impact on the flow of your development.

Optimize your team's development processSimilar to Scrum, Kanban is a visual board that uses cards to represent user stories and tasks with a prioritized backlog. However, instead of focusing on time-based iterations, Kanban is more concerned with optimizing your team's workflow to ensure that everyone is adding value to the development process at all times. Turn the GreenHopper task board into a Kanban board by breaking down the discrete tasks of the team and mapping them to your JIRA workflow. Then apply constraints to each column limiting the number of cards that can be "in process" at any given time. Exceeding column limits indicates a bottleneck and that the team should focus on something else to reduce wasted effort. Over time, teams fine tune the constraints on each column to optimize the flow of development.

Release when you're readyManaging a backlog for the release is done using a version on the GreenHopper planning board. Configure the statistics important for the team to show in the at-a-glance version summary along with quick links to the task board, statistical markers and a printable card summary for the release. Since teams practicing Kanban are focused on improving development speed, they are less concerned about start and end dates for the release. Column constraints encourage teams to work on in-process tasks from right side of the Kanban board. Completing these tasks opens up capacity to move more cards in from the columns to the left. This "pull" effect from right-to-left is key to making the team operate efficiently without wasting time and effort. The team decides to release when enough features have been pulled across the board to justify doing so.

Scrumban: the best of both worldsAlthough Scrum and Kanban may seem at odds, they are best described as complimentary tools similar to a knife and a fork. One is not better than the other because they both have


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By Atlassian different strengths for unique purposes. When combined effectively, their aggregate value is greater than the sum of the parts. Most Scrum/Kanban hybrids don't just manifest overnight, they evolve over time. With the flexibility of GreenHopper and JIRA, teams can maintain iterations from Scrum, with regular retrospectives and planning cycles, while adding incremental process improvements from Kanban.

Backlog ManagementDrag and drop prioritization on virtual card wallThe GreenHopper planning board makes managing your backlog fast and effective.

Filter cards to organize the backlogs for your product, release and sprints. Drag and drop issues to prioritize in preparation for your sprint planning.

Building your backlogsManaging a variety of backlogs is simple. Create a master version for your release and nested versions for each of the sprints within the release. GreenHopper allows you to add start and end dates for each and view at-a-glance statistics and progress at all times. When viewing the planning board by version see the three common types of backlogs:

Product backlog All unscheduled cards not yet implemented for your product. Release backlog An aggregate view of all cards for your release and related sprints. Sprint backlog The specific tasks in a particular iteration.

You can also sort by any field and view backlogs by component, assignee or entire project to ensure priorities are well balanced. Setup contexts, using JIRA filters or custom constraints, to filter and highlight cards. Share contexts with the team to ensure everyone is on the same page.

Drag and drop prioritizationView the planning board by rank in order to quickly prioritize any backlog. Simply drag and drop cards up and down to create an ordered list so the development team may begin estimating, prior to a planning session.


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By Atlassian Use statistical markers to help the planning process as well as any re-prioritisation during a sprint. Enable a marker for any statistic field - like the number of hours estimated, story points or cards - to add a line across the planning board which indicates the team's capacity for the sprint. Any cards above the line are more likely to be completed during the sprint than those below. Also, keep an eye on the version summary to ensure you stay within the capacity of the team.

Sprint PlanningDrag and drop iteration planningThe GreenHopper planning board is perfect for both sprint and release planning.

Once you have prioritized the backlog and estimated the user stories, you are ready to break down the technical tasks. Plan the sprint by simply dragging cards from the top of the backlog to the desired sprint.

Estimating user stories and technical tasksTypically, Scrum teams estimate user stories using story points. A story point is an arbitrary value based on the relative complexity compared to other stories. Many teams do this in unique ways, like using Fibonacci numbers, T-shirt sizes or dots, and continuously tune their system over time. By default GreenHopper uses numerical values, but it can be configured to fit any system by using custom fields.

Once user stories are prioritized, they are typically broken down into technical tasks. Unlike user stories, technical tasks may be estimated using an absolute value, like actual hours. Some teams do this prior to their sprint planning while others do it at a later time. No matter how you chose to do it, statistics for the sprint and release summaries are updated instantly to help guide sprint planning.

Setting up iterationsAfter creating a master version for the release, the Scrum Master creates a nested version with the appropriate start and end dates to represent each of the sprints, or iterations, within that release.

Configure the version summary to display the statistics of importance to the team and optionally set the minimum and maximum values to indicate the teams capacity. In GreenHopper Agile Project Management Page 7

By Atlassian addition to showing at-a-glance statistics and progress, the collapsable version summary also provides quick links to the task and chart boards, statistical markers and a printable card summary for the sprint.

Planning a sprintOnce the backlog is in order, user stories are assigned to a sprint by simply dragging cards from the top of the backlog onto a sprint (nested version) using the planning board.

Use statistical markers to help the planning process. Enable a marker for any statistic field - like the number of hours estimated, story points or cards - to add a line across the backlog which indicates the team's capacity for the given sprint. Then just drag the marker onto a sprint to move all the cards above the line.

Be sure to track progress throughout the sprint with the statistical summary on the planning board or the burndown charts on the chart board, and re-prioritize on the fly, as necessary.

Task and Time TrackingFocus on the task at handDuring a sprint, the GreenHopper task board is the central place for developers to manage their work queue and provide feedback to the team by simply dragging cards across swim lanes. Optimize the development process with elements of Kanban by adding constraints to any workflow.

Check the task boardView the task board by version to see the team's "to do" list along with visibility into the progress for the sprint. All developers can see the prioritized list of all of tasks to be completed for the sprint and quickly claim a task to work on. They can sort by any field and further refine the view by setting a context using JIRA filters, custom constraints or highlights. Contexts are shareable within the team to ensure everyone is on the same page. Developers can also see their personal queue by restricting the task board to only "My Issues". Since the swim lanes map to JIRA workflows, progress can be indicated by simply dragging and dropping cards from one column to another. The overall status for the sprint is indicated across the top of the task board.


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Capturing time as you workAs developers complete their tasks, they can log work either through their IDE or directly on the cards on the task board. Indicating the time spent on an issue will automatically reduce the time remaining based on the original estimate.

If the original estimate was slightly off, providing an more accurate estimate of the time remaining will update the sprint summary for the team to plan accordingly. The hour burndown chart also tracks estimate accuracy throughout the sprint to help the team plan for future iterations.

Charts and ReportingBurndown, burnup and value chartsUse the chart board and agile gadgets to track the progress of your projects with a variety of charts showing total team effort to date. Analyze the statistics provided by GreenHopper to keep the current sprint on track, reflect on past iterations and improve estimates for the upcoming sprints.

Dynamic burndown and burnup chartsAnalyze your development team's progress with real-time reporting in GreenHopper. Generate burndown, burnup and value charts for any sprint or release (version). All charts are configurable to take into account non-work days ensuring they remain accurate despite public holidays. Standard burndown charts map your team's performance by both issue counts or hours and can be accessed from either the chart board or the Agile gadget for your JIRA Dashboard. You can also configure burndown and burnup charts for custom attributes, like story points. Value charts allow you to create reports using the statistics configured on your planning board - like the number of hours or story points - to track the performance of your team in relation to those statistics over time.

Monitor trends and improve estimate accuracyGreenHopper charts help you monitor trends, and improve your ability to estimate tasks in the future. If new issues get added to an iteration, the burndown charts help you gauge the impact of scope changes on the initial release timeline. And since all charts track both completed and GreenHopper Agile Project Management Page 9

By Atlassian in progress tasks, a trend line will project how the team will finish the sprint at the current velocity. The chart board also calculates your actual performance compared to your initial estimates allowing you to project future completion dates based on past accuracy rates. In addition to monitoring the progress of your sprint you will want to keep an eye on the end date by adding the Days Remaining gadget to your teams dashboard.


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greenhopper product overview

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