Presenters: Koen De Hondt

Objectives

Participants will learn about a simple tool that can be used to model parts of their development process, in particular recording of stories, planning of stories, tracking and reporting progress. They will also learn that the tool's usage is not restricted to stories, but can for example also be used for managing requirements and risks

Intended audience

Everyone who is using or considers using a tool for agile planning will benefit from this session. I will share insights that you will not read on the Mingle website, nor in the Mingle documentation. The last 9 months, I have been very active in the Mingle user community and I had a very good relationship with ThoughtWorks to roll out Mingle within EMC. I learned a lot of things that I would not have picked up otherwise. I will share that knowledge in the presentation. The audience does not need to know about agile planning tools. A basic knowledge of agile planning is enough. I will use scrum as the example agile development process, but most of the presentation can be immediately applied to XP as well.

Contents

Several tools exist to support the planning and tracking aspects of agile development projects. Many of them impose a way of working. ThoughtWork's Mingle does not. It can be used to model your development process the way you want it to be. This session is an experience report of using Mingle for planning and tracking scrum projects. The experience is based on the usage of Mingle in a multi-manyear project. The participants will first learn the basic concepts of Mingle, soon to be followed by an explanation and a demonstration of how the basic concepts can be combined to support the agile planning process and the planning ceremonies in particular. After that the tracking and reporting facilities will be shown. The presentation will not only emphasize the nice properties of Mingle. It will also clearly indicate its shortcomings.

Format and length: experience report, including some short demos, 1 hour