COMPARISON STUDY BETWEEN
AGILEFANT AND XPLANNER PLUS
Professor Daniel Amyot
Ruijun Fan
Badr Alsubaihi
6472462
6208070
Submitted to Professor Daniel Amyot in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the course CSI 5112
(Software Engineering)
Outline
 Business Context
 Study Plan
 High Impact Criteria
 Low Impact Criteria
 Results
 Conclusion
Introduction about Agile Methods
 "Agile" is an umbrella term used to describe a variety
of methods that encourage continual realignment of
development goals with the needs and expectations
of the customer.
 Agile Methods are a reaction to traditional ways of
developing software.
 Agile Methods are actually a collection of different
techniques (or practices) that share the same values
and basic principles.
Business Context
 Software Development Company.
 Main Business: Insourcing Projects ( two to six
month long projects).
 Number of Employees: 2 teams (4 developers) and a
Projects Manager.
 Development Technique: Incremental Development
Methods (Agile).
 The purpose of this study:
Select an Agile management tool that fits our
company’s needs from the head manager to all employs.
Study Plan
 Minimal Requirements:
The two selected tools must meet
these
criteria
to
be
under
evaluation.
 High Impact Criteria:
It is out of ten and reflects the need
of this criterion in our company.
 Low Impact Criteria:
It is out of five and reflects how much
this criterion can improve and facilitate
our work.
Minimal Requirements

Cost: As a small company, open source and free Agile tools has
the highest priority.

Compatible Running Environment:


Operating System: Windows 7.

Database: to be designed in MySQL.
Active Life Cycle:

By looking at previous releases and how much improvements
have been done in between.
Minimal Requirements
Criteria\Tool
IceScrum
Agilefant
Agilo
Xplanner+
Cost
Free
(5)
Free
(5)
$1500/year
(2)
Free
(5)
Platform
HSQL
(3)
Windows +
MYSQL
(5)
Web-based
(4)
Windows + MYSQL
(5)
Life Cycle
Active
(4)
Active
(4)
Active
(5)
Active
(4)
Scores
12
14
11
14
Agilefant and Xplanner plus
Agilefant

It is developed by Software Business and
Xplanner-plus

It is commonly used and based on
Engineering Institute (SoberIT) at
Xplanner, which had a large user base
Helsinki University of Technology.
and was the primary tool on the market.

System Requirements:






OS: (tested on Windows, Apple OS and Linux)
Java (Sun jdk 1.5, 1.6,)
Application server: Tomcat 5.5, 6.0, or 7.0
RAM at least 512M for Tomcat.
Database: MySQL 5.
Browser: (Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome).
•

System Requirements:






OS: (tested on Linux and Windows).
Java (Sun jdk 1.5, 1.6, openjdk 6).
Application server: Tomcat 5.5, 6.0; jetty 5.
RAM at least 512M for Tomcat.
Database: HSQLDB, MySQL.
Browser: Any.
Many problems on Microsoft Internet Explorer.
Score (9)
Score (10)
High Impact Criteria: Usability
Agilefant
1.
Ease of Installation: (3 hours)
1.
2.
Requires little training.
Does not affect other installed
programs.
2. User Interfaces:
easy to
understand and simple in a
reasonable way.
Score (9)
Xplanner plus
1.
Ease of Installation: (2 hours)
1.
2.
Does not require training.
Does not affect other installed
programs.
2. User Interfaces: very simple and
straightforward but requires many
clicks to perform simple action.
Score (9)
High Impact Criteria: Documentation
Agilefant
1) The installation documentation is
sufficient.
Xplanner-plus
1) The installation documentation is
brief.
2) The user guide: uses wiki. It is very
clear and can be used for training.
2) The user guide: We are sorry to admit that
there isn't much in term of user documentation.
However, the tool is intuitive enough that little
documentation is needed.
3) Support:
3) Support:
1)
The Forum: very active (with 141 topics).
1)
The Forum: does not have.
2)
The Email: effective responses.
2)
The Email: effective responses.
Score (8)
Score (6)
High Impact Criteria: Functionality
Agilefant
1)
Manager:
1)
2)
3)
4)
5)
Provides most of Microsoft Project
features.
Set Project Roles.
Nice Dashboard.
Portfolio management.
Tracking:
1)
2)
6)
Communications with teams:
1)
2)
7)
Built-In-Time TrackingSystem.
Effort Spent.
Set up automatic Reminders.
Emails.
Generate Reports: (web page or
Excel). Roadmap Reports.
High Impact Criteria: Functionality
Xplanner-plus
1)
Manager:
1)
2)
3)
4)
Provides most of Microsoft
Project features.
Set Project Roles.
Dashboard (Promising)
Tracking:
1)
2)
5)
Communications with teams:
1)
2)
6)
Online time tracking and
time sheet generation.
Effort Spent can not be
according to users.
Emails.
Virtual note cards
Generate and export Reports:
(XML, MS Project, Excel).
High Impact Criteria: Functionality
Agilefant
1) Developers:
Xplanner-plus
1) Developers:

Supports prioritization.

Support TWiki-style text formatting.

Has Product Backlog.

Support external tool integration and

Personal work queue

Can clearly see what other
extensible wiki word linking.

iteration.
developers is planning to do

Nice Graphical presentation.
Drag and Drop stories to next

attach notes to stories and tasks.

Multi-select options for actions.
High Impact Criteria: Functionality
Agilefant
Xplanner-plus
 Manager: 4 out 4
 Manager: 3 out of 4
 Developer: 5 out 6
 Developer: 5 out 6
Score (9)
Score (8)
High Impact Criteria: Performance
Agilefant
 Although it is rich of
Xplanner-plus
 Sometimes, it has a bug on a
features, it has a high
main feature which is
performance and responds to
reporting.
project’s changes.
Score (9)
Score (7)
Low Impact Criteria: Suitability
Agilefant
Xplanner-plus
 Performs well on large
 It is painful to use it for
teams.
 As result, it performs
well on large projects
too.
more than 20 people.
 As a result, it is hard to
use it for managing large
projects.
Score (5)
Score (3)
Low Impact Criteria: Stability
Agilefant
 Sometimes it crashes
Xplanner-plus
 it is very rear to crash.
when using secondary
features but it is rich of
features.
Score (4)
Score (5)
Low Impact Criteria: Scalability
Agilefant
 It could collect and
efficiently display Large
amounts of data.
Score (5)
Xplanner-plus
 It is slower when dealing
with large amounts of
data and many users.
Score (3)
Results
High Impact Criteria
Criterion
Agilefant
Xplanner-plus
Minimal
Requirements
9
10
Criterion
Agilefant
Xplanner-plus
Usability
9
9
Suitability
5
3
Documentation
8
6
Stability
4
5
Functionality
9
8
Scalability
5
3
Performance
8
7
Total Scores
14
11
Total Scores
43
40
Low Impact Criteria
CONCLUSION
 Agilefant is a simple but it is very capable tool and a
powerful solution. It brings together the perspectives of
organizing daily work, long-term product and release
planning and project portfolio management.
 We would recommend using Agilefant over xplanner-
plus.
Thank You
Questions ?