One of the key pillars of Agile is trusting teams to self-organise. In practice, this often looks like teams picking their own tools to use. While it might sound like a scary, messy concept, if you have good talent they’ll be motivated to stay organised and on track with whatever solution they choose - or roll over to a better one when they find it.

Here we discuss the main tools that Agile teams use to organise their workflow, communication, project management,

1. A big wall, sticky notes, and markers

Thought the number one tool for Agile teams would be some fancy software? You would be wrong. Your main Agile battlestation is a room where team members gather with a big wall where you can plot and plan (a big whiteboard works wonders), plus sticky notes (helpful for Kanban) and markers.

So long as your team is co-located, you can go old-school and turn your Agile planning space into a classroom style setup. The main benefit of this setup is that there is a huge amount of visual real estate, you can move things around at will (hence the sticky notes) and get a full project overview, which can be tricky even for those with a three screen setup.

When you have daily standups or sprint meetings, everyone can get involved and play around with timing concepts and components to “see what things might look like” and be able to easily conceptualise overall picture.

2. Kanban software

Beyond in-person Kanban, we also need a software version so we can pull it up at any time, shuffle cards, mark off completions, etc. There are plenty of these type of organisational tools on the market.

Many teams use Trello for this purpose. Trello is a boards, lists, and cards solution that works much like your whiteboard and sticky notes solution but is obviously a little more multi-functional. Trello has plenty of in-built integrations that are useful for Agile teams, such as GitHub, Google Docs, and Jira. Other automations can be built out using their API or a tool like Zapier. There are various browser add-ons such as Burndown and Scrum for Trello that can further enhance the experience.

For enterprises, larger projects, or scaling Agile, then VersionOne is a good step up from Trello.

3. Communication software

Another key pillar of Agile is communication. Teams should be able to fluidly share and bounce around ideas, ask for feedback, and coordinate no matter their project role, from management through to developers, ops, and test. With mixed role Agile teams, it is not possible for the process to work properly without communication.

Even if an Agile team is co-located, having communication software that captures all conversations, shared files and resources is critical to have a paper trail.

The most popular communication software currently for these purposes is Slack. Slack is highly extensible with add-ons, the ability to easily create bots, and develop teams’ own automations and communication workflows. Within Slack, you create channels (where various sections of work can be discussed), can tag other users, upload files, and plenty more.

4. Project management

This is a bit of a contentious subject, for a few reasons. Jira is Atlassian’s project management and issue tracking product, which is the number one software product used by Agile teams around the world. Jira is a mature product and has many features; it’s built specifically for Agile project management, unlike Trello, which is more of a multi-purpose tool.

The issue with Jira is that it takes time to develop slick workflows, and not dump a ton of time into project management. Once you refine processes it can be an extremely useful tool, with all the necessary integrations, a highly-customisable platform, software-specific processes and terms, and detailed reporting. For Agile teams who haven’t used Jira before, it’s worth investing in training: jumping in blind is going to be an interesting learning experience, but you probably won’t make the most out of the platform.

5. Lessons learned: Sprint retrospectives

Agile teams work in small sprints, which means when issues arise, they can “fail fast” and be addressed quickly. Many Agile tools aren’t built to capture these lessons learned from each sprint, or even areas where the sprint involved a major win.

It’s important to capture these retrospectives in case they are useful in the future: document, document, document. Data storage is far more reliable than the human brain (when set up correctly that is!).

There are a few retrospective tools floating around, however one that comes up often in developer circles is FunRetro, which is lightweight and easy to use.

Agile makes customers and developers happier

With regular feedback loops, plenty of choice for developers, and a more diverse work team, Agile has laid its foundations as the go-to software design methodology for happier customers, developers, and managers.

If you would like help with an Agile project, or with implementing Agile practices (and tools) in your workplace, then get in contact with us . CodeFirst can make it happen.