In our experience, traditional project management tools like Microsoft Project, SharePoint, spreadsheets, and project wikis do not provide the level of granular visibility into the state of work (such as user stories, tasks, iterations, releases, defects, tests, and so on). They also do not provide the predictive planning necessary for successfully managing agile software development for BPM projects. There are a number of tools available for managing agile software development; some are more mature than others, for instance IBM Rational® Team Concert™. Rational Team Concert is a segment leader for managing agile projects and artifacts. It can be downloaded from jazz.net community site (https://jazz.net/) and is available at no cost for up to 10 users with no time limit.

Rational Team Concert does require a server for installation and is accessible through a browser or an installable Eclipse based client. If server installation and management is an issue for you, there are many commercial tools available for managing agile projects in a SaaS/Cloud environment. As project data is stored in a cloud environment with these tools, you should review privacy issues and security concerns.

There are methods to manage agile software development projects that do not require any software at all. If the team is co-located, post-it notes on a whiteboard are an effective method of tracking the backlog, the current iteration, and work that is complete. In this scenario, each post-it represents a user story with a point estimate and assumptions captured on the card. The whiteboard (or blank wall) has four columns: backlog, planning, in progress, and complete. This method makes reporting much more complicated, but in lieu of purchasing SaaS or obtaining a server to install Rational Team Concert on, it is a viable method.