Work Item Management with IBM Rational ClearQuest and Jazz: Managing Agile Projects
Many software projects are moving to Agile methods. This chapter is not about teaching Agile development; you can read about Agile in many articles and books. Instead, it is about realizing Agile with Rational Team Concert (RTC) and ClearQuest.
While Rational Team Concert was developed with Agile methods in mind, Rational ClearQuest is an older product and was developed with more traditional methods in mind. Luckily ClearQuest is highly customizable, so we can develop schemas with a process that meets the modern development environment.
In this chapter we shall explain in brief the Agile method concept, just to set the right context for the rest of the chapter. The Scrum process is becoming more popular with all types of software development projects. We will use RTC's process enactment of Scrum to illustrate some of the methods within this Agile process. We shall later explain how to build a schema with ClearQuest that will help Agile teams and stakeholders manage their projects smarter to help produce better products.
ClearQuest users using Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) will learn how to configure a project to meet the needs of Agile teams.
11.1 Defining Agile Development
There is no single definition of what Agile development is. There are some principles that many agree upon, and teams can adapt them as it suits their organization. Scott Ambler (see "Resources" at the end of this chapter) defines Agile software development as follows:
- Agile is an iterative and incremental (evolutionary) approach to software development
- which is performed in a highly collaborative manner
- by self-organizing teams
- with "just enough" ceremony
- that produces high quality software
- in a cost effective and timely manner
- which meets the changing needs of its stakeholders.
We shall later see how both Rational Team Concert and a ClearQuest schema we propose respond to this definition.
The Agile system development lifecycle is described in Figure 11.1.
Figure 11.1 The Agile System Development Lifecycle (copyright Scott W. Ambler)