13 Oct Stop Colliding & Start Connecting! Wicresoft’s Timesheet Solution for PMO’s with Hybrid Waterfall & Agile Teams
According to Forrester’s The 2015 State of Agile Development: Learn from the Agile Expert Firms report, since 2013, there are twice as many companies using Agile to help create more value for their business. In VersionOne’s 11th Annual State of Agile Survey, more than 90% of respondents’ organizations had adopted agile in their software organizations. Agile is here, and its here to stay.
This causes a challenge for PMO’s that are ultimately responsible for understanding the true cost of managing projects. In the eyes of the PMO, time is money which is why they implement project timesheet solutions. So, how can PMO’s capture the timesheet information they need – from both agile & waterfall projects?
In this blog, I’ll share a few different scenarios that should resonate with organizations using Project Online – and looking for a way to integrate their agile software development teams into their timesheet solution for visibility into overarching time and costs. Project Online timesheets offer the following capabilities that can be extended to agile software development teams:
- Track work performed seamlessly from Agile teams for customer billing and capitalization measurement
- Capture time and attendance, overtime, non-project work, project work and leave in one system
- Multi-level approvals keeping approvers engaged with their team
- Insights on historical performance to improve accuracy of future estimates
In the first scenario, we have a PMO that is using Project Online and Agile software development teams managing projects in an agile tool such as Jira, TFS or VersionOne. The agile software team uses the work log / timesheet capability within their agile project management tool. So, what now?
PLEASE don’t make the agile teams put time into two systems! It will only drive even more frustration between the two worlds and there is no need to do that! Wicresoft has built a bridge to connect the two worlds. By using our OneConnect integration platform, you can set up an integration to pull timesheet data from agile tools like Jira, VersionOne or TFS into Project Online for reporting & visibility.
In the second scenario, the agile software development teams are not tracking time within their agile project management tool of choice. In this case, the PMO can set up Project Online to capture Project information from Jira, VersionOne or TFS at the level they choose – typically the project, story, and/or task level. All end users can log into Project Online and quickly enter time into the correct categories.
Of course, there may be a hybrid scenario where the end users may be working on items that are outside of the particular software development project, such as a service request or participating in training. Well, by logging into Project Online’s Timesheet, the end user will have all their software development tasks pre-populated by the integration. Then they can simply enter all other time, click submit and get back to work.
Because Project Online resources can have rates associated to them, the PMO can convert those hours to actual costs and have the visibility they need to effectively manage their portfolio. All the while, teams are working in their tool of choice without duplicate entry being required. Win, Win!
For more info on the OneConnect for Agile, watch this on-demand webinar Delivering a Unified PPM – Agile Management Solution with Project Online
For more info on the value for Agile teams to track time, please feel free to review this blog on The Value of Time Management for Agile Teams.
