My #Mingle experience

One of the things I love about being a consultant is that you are forced to work with new technologies. Companies and people tend to find something they like and then stick to it. This is true whether we are talking about food, TV shows, or software. I have used TargetProcess for an Agile project management tool in the past and I loved the interface and the functionality that was provided.

On my latest project, the client had already chosen Mingle. I was actually looking forward to using a different Agile project management tool so I could compare and contrast. After being able to use Mingle for a while on my projects here are my observations:

Kudos!

• I love that Mingle and TargetProcess both allow you a ton of power to customize the product to fit your current situation. Both TargetProcess and Mingle also implement the concept of workflow. This is very powerful and if anything I would suggest that Mingle’s transitions are a more elegant solution.
• Although Mingle seems easier at the start, it actually took me longer to understand the structure and process and what structuring my cards in a certain way really meant. That said, once I understood those implications, Mingle provided more power and functionality.
• The flexibility to make every object in the process a card and define the attributes for those cards is a very powerful metaphor.
• The only place Mingle seems to be awkward is when you are creating and managing by Iterations. The process and functionality didn’t seem to flow as nicely as it did in TargetProcess. In hindsight I believe TargetProcess is perhaps better suited to Iterative execution of projects where Mingle is better suited to pure Flow execution of projects. Once we dropped the concept of Iterations and just focused on the Flow and WIP, the Mingle template and process was much simpler and easier.
• MQL is an interesting beast. Once you understand what the basic syntax and functionality is, it provides a lot of power to be able to generate reports and graphs to report on your projects. To be honest, once you get the hang of it you wish that MQL provided more functionality so you can generate more metrics straight from MQL. Pretty cool stuff.
• The concept of having a Wiki per card that you can modify is very cool. Once you realize that you also define templates for the Wiki’s for each card, you start to get even more bang for your buck.
• The concepts of Trees and setting up Aggregate properties took a little playing to fully grasp. This might be something that Thoughtworks could generate a FAQ as I’m sure I’m not the only one that had questions. Once you understood the how and why to generate trees and how to create aggregate properties, the benefits of using these structures were unquestioned.
• The ability to create grids or lists from any types of Cards and customize the appearance is awesome. Took a while to grasp just how powerful this is. Once you understand, you can virtually do anything you want.

Pet Peeves

• I really wish I could hide the All, History, and Murmurs tabs. For some projects where we are all co-located, these tabs are not used and they just clutter up the screen.
• I hate how my tabs are in alphabetical sequence (for the most part) and I can’t change the order. Seems like a minor thing, but the experience would be so much better if I could do this.
•  The visualization of the Trees need some attention. This is a great idea for a visualization, but real estate quickly becomes an issue. Options to expand cards horizontally instead of vertically would help greatly. It quickly becomes cumbersome when you have 20+ cards. 

Summary

It will take a bit longer to get the hang of using Mingle as compared to TargetProcess or Rally. But this is time well spent. I will have a real dilemma to choose an Agile Project Management tool for my next project. If you haven’t used Mingle and especially if your project is more flow-based than iteration-based, I’d highly recommend looking into it.

The #2 Agile Project Management Tool

Why would I write a post about the #2 Agile Project Management Tool and not #1? Because we all know that sticky notes, and physical Kan Ban board and team stand ups are obviously #1, right? I mean what tool could improve upon that? But in addition to the physical sticky notes, there are some other advantages that can be realized by using one of the many Agile Project Management tools out there.

Agile Project Management Tool Objectives

The additional value I think that can be realized are:

1. Provide mechanism to manage a Virtual Kan Ban board and facilitate project and release planning.
2. Provide a virtual, web-enabled Project Management tool that can be used by remote team members.
3. Provide automated reports that can be used to report on project status, velocity, burn up, and burn down.
4. Create a database of project estimates versus actuals that can be used to improve.

My Search

I know when I started looking around I was overwhelmed with the amount of tools out there. My purpose in writing this blog post is to provide the information that I wish I would have been able to find to help me with my choice back then. I have downloaded and installed each and every one of the five tools that I will be discussing. Now some of these tools I downloaded and evaluated a few months ago so the functionality may have changed somewhat. My apologies if certain aspects have changed, but these tools are all changing very quickly and it is almost impossible to keep up with all of them.

The Candidates

The Agile Project Management Tools I evaluated were:

1. Version One
2. Rally
3. Target Process
4. Mingle
5. Agile Zen

 The Rating Categories

I rounded the criteria down to 10 rating categories which I graded the candidates in each. I graded the candidates by a number from 0 to 3. The ratings were awarded based on my review at that time of the functionality. The review was what I would term to be an intermediate review. I tried to go into a good amount of depth, but I also did not have an inordinate amount of time to perform the review. As usual when I do review like this I fill out the numbers and let mathematics define the winner.

• Internet-enabled (Private) – allows for all team members to remotely log in and review status
• Virtual Kan Ban – provides a virtual Kan Ban board that all team members can view
• Manage Physical Kan Ban – allows for the management of the physical Kan Ban board by printing cards and splitting stories
• Iteration Planning – facilitates the planning and managing of Iterations
• Release Planning – facilitates the planning and managing of Iterations and Releases
• Project Planning – facilitates the planning and managing of Iterations, Releases, and Projects
• Self Hosted – Allows for the client to host the tool. (Easily and with little additional effort or cost)
• Workflow and Customization – provides workflow functionality and allowing for customization
• Build Project History – allows for the retention of project estimates and actuals to improve
• Reporting – provides canned reports to help to report on status.

	Version One	Rally	Agile Zen	Mingle	Target Process
Web-enabled	3	3	3	3	3
Virtual Kan Ban	2	2	3	2	2
Manage Physical Kan Ban	3	3	3	3	3
Iteration Planning	3	3	1	1	3
Release Planning	3	3	1	1	3
Project Planning	3	3	1	1	3
Self Hosted	0	0	0	3	3
Workflow & Customizations	1	2	1	1	3
build project history	3	3	1	1	3
Reporting	3	3	1	1	3
Total	24	25	15	17	29

Notables

• For what I needed out of the Agile Project Management Tools, Agile, Version One, and TargetProcess were at the head of the class. This is because they allow me to manage iterations with a Kan Ban board AND facilitate overall project planning as well.
• AgileZen probably has the best Kan Ban board with a timer on the duration a story has been blocked. Very nice feature.
• TargetProcess has a great feature to be able to easily split stories.
• TargetProcess was the only one out of the big three that allowed me to EASILY host the solution. This was a key differentiator
• TargetProcess had an excellent Workflow system with the ability to add custom fields and rename standard terminology in the system. Very cool.
• TargetProcess also had a good suite of canned reports and a facility for me to create my own reports

In Summary

For my needs, TargetProcess was the clear winner. Any of these tools are great choices depending on what you need to do. But given that I needed to host my data and plan releases and the entire project, TargetProcess was a clear choice. It was also a huge benefit that I was provided the ability to customize the solution and workflow. I have learned to appreciate the power of the customization and workflow features and have used continued to increase my use of these features.