SpiraPlan® - Product Information
Accelerating Project Delivery with Agile Project Management
© Copyright 2006-2014, Inflectra Corporation
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Objectives
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After viewing this presentation you will:

Understand the challenges involved in planning and
managing projects and why traditional waterfall
methodologies have failed to deliver projects on-time
and on-budget.

Have a strong grasp on the project management
features provided by SpiraPlan®

Have learned about the benefits of using SpiraPlan®
to plan, execute and manage your project
© Copyright 2006-2014, Inflectra Corporation
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Agenda
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Why use Agile Methodologies
Project Management Challenges
SpiraPlan® Overview
Feature Walkthrough
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Requirements Management
Release Planning
Iteration Planning
Task Tracking
Bug / Issue Tracking
Source Code Integration
Integration / Migration Options
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Synchronization with external bug-trackers
Migration from other systems
© Copyright 2006-2014, Inflectra Corporation
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Why Agile Methodologies?
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Traditionally projects are delivered in a series of phases
that are based on increasing levels of certainty around
the system being built:
Traditional Waterfall Methodology
Requirements
Gathering
Business
Design
Technical
Design
Systems Development
Unit
Testing
Integration
Testing
Acceptance
Testing
(UAT)
Release Complete
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However this approach has some drawbacks:
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It is not flexible to changes in customer requirements
Time is wasted building features that nobody needs
The end user cannot give feedback till it’s completed coded
You don’t know how stable the system is until the end
© Copyright 2006-2014, Inflectra Corporation
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The Agile Approach

Instead of phases, projects are broken down into
releases and iterations. At the end of each iteration you
have a fully functioning system that could be released:
Traditional Waterfall Methodology
Requirements
Gathering
Business
Design
Technical
Design
Systems Development
Unit
Testing
Integration
Testing
Acceptance
Testing
(UAT)
Release Complete
Agile Methodology
Limited
Upfront
Planning
Release #1
It 1
It 2
Release #2
It 3
It 4
It 5
Release #3
It 6
It 7
It 8
Release #4
It 9
It 10
It 11
It 12
Release Complete
Iteration N
Iteration
Planning
© Copyright 2006-2014, Inflectra Corporation
Development, Continuous Integration, Unit
Testing, Functional & Acceptance Testing
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The Agile Approach (3)
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The requirements for the project do not have to be codified upfront,
instead they are prioritized and scheduled for each iteration:
 The requirements are composed of ‘stories’ that can be
scheduled into a particular release and iteration
Release Plan
Iteration
Iteration
Scope
© Copyright 2006-2014, Inflectra Corporation
Tested,
Integrated
Working
System
Iteration
Plan
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The Agile Approach (3)
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There are several different agile methods:
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Scrum
Extreme Programming (XP)
Agile Unified Process (AUP)
Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM)
They have specific features that make them better suited
to different situations, but in general, they follow the
same basic agile principles*:
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Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Working software over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan
*Source: Agile Manifesto - http://agilemanifesto.org
© Copyright 2006-2014, Inflectra Corporation
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The Existing Project Management Toolkit
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Traditionally, Software Development organizations use
the following tools to manage their lifecycles:
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Requirements stored in MS-Word documents, MS-Excel
spreadsheets or expensive tools such a RequisitePro, Doors
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High-level project plan (GANTT chart) developed in tools such
as Microsoft Project, Primavera and printed out for reference
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Project estimates prepared using a combination of the high-level
project plan and specialized standalone MS-Excel spreadsheets
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Detailed schedules maintained by individual team members
using MS-Excel, Whiteboards or Groupware solutions

MS-Access, MS-Excel or standalone web-based bug-tracking
system for tracking issues and defects
© Copyright 2006-2014, Inflectra Corporation
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Project Management Toolkit Challenges
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As the static project plan with its discrete phases has
become replaced by the more flexible agile approach,
the old set of tools no longer works:
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The project requirements and scope are not locked-down so the
schedule of releases and iterations needs to be connected to the
requirements backlog in real-time
The project schedule is constantly evolving, with stories being
reallocated to different iterations and team members reestimating the number of stories they can complete (velocity)
Defects and stories need to be managed in the same
environment, with the project estimates and schedules taking
account of both at all times
SpiraPlan is explicitly designed to address these issues
and provide an integrated solution…
© Copyright 2006-2014, Inflectra Corporation
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SpiraPlan® Overview
© Copyright 2006-2014, Inflectra Corporation
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Product Overview
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Instead of having to buy separate requirements management,
project planning and defect tracking tools, SpiraPlan provides a
complete Agile Project Management solution in one package.
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SpiraPlan manages your project's requirements, user stories,
release plans, iteration plans, tasks, bugs and issues in one
environment. Since it’s web based, teams can collaborate in real
time and have up to the minute visibility of the project’s status.
© Copyright 2006-2014, Inflectra Corporation
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Why Choose SpiraPlan?
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The top reasons that our customers choose SpiraPlan
over other solutions are:
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It is a complete solution that includes requirements management,
release planning, iteration planning, task estimation and defect tracking
all fully integrated from day one.
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Highly intuitive web application that provides a complete picture of a
project’s status and health yet requires only a web-browser.
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Methodology Agnostic – SpiraPlan can be used equally web for any
agile methodology – including Scrum, AUP, XP, DSDM
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Ability to leverage your existing technology investments. SpiraPlan
integrates with many third-party defect-management systems and
software configuration management (SCM) systems.
In addition, we provide superb technical support that ensures that
enquiries and questions are dealt with in a timely and professional
manner.
© Copyright 2006-2014, Inflectra Corporation
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Feature Snapshot
Listed below are some of the many great features that makes
SpiraPlan agile project management software the leading choice
for companies and organizations worldwide:
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Develop high-level requirements
with initial estimates
Prioritize and schedule
requirements for each iteration
Determine resourcing levels to
deliver required features
Planning board for easy
communication of backlog
Decompose requirements into
detailed task breakdown
Integrated web-based document
management.
© Copyright 2006-2014, Inflectra Corporation
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Allocate tasks to developers
based on task estimates
Load-balance project
resources to maximize project
velocity
Track issues and defects
against project schedule
View project velocity,
burndown and burnup reports
Customizable dashboards of
key project information
Integration with multiple IDEs
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Competitive Landscape
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We believe that SpiraPlan offers an unbeatable combination of
capability and affordability:
Source: Inflectra Corporation, 2011
Niche Players
Challengers
SpiraPlan
XPlanner
Mingle
Affordability
ScrumWorks
JIRA &
Greenhopper
AcuNote
AxoSoft OnTime
SmartBear
QaComplete
Uncompetitive
Incumbents
Breadth of Features / Capability
© Copyright 2006-2014, Inflectra Corporation
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Representative Customers
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The following are some of the organizations who are using
SpiraPlan to manage their application development lifecycles:
Energy & Industrial
Financial & Business Services
Government
Information Technology
Healthcare & Bio-Technology
Telecommunications
Retail & Consumer Goods
Transportation & Hospitality
© Copyright 2006-2014, Inflectra Corporation
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Testimonials
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“…My team has used SpiraPlan for over 6 months and have been satisfied
with the Project Management and collaboration features of the software. Will
definitely use Inflectra products again.“
- Dan – Vector One Consulting
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“…SpiraPlan from Inflectra is a lifesaver! It was very easy to use, organized,
and user-friendly. I will definitely recommend and utilize this program in the
future.”
- Lindsay Snider
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“…We use Inflectra software in many of our projects and we are proud to offer
their tools to our customers. It is also big pleasure to cooperate with the
Inflectra team.“
- Viktor Tarnavskyi – Soflab Technology
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“The team here really have a great product on their hands with helpfulness
and ease. Who wouldn't use this software for business planning needs?! ...“
- Mika
© Copyright 2006-2014, Inflectra Corporation
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Introduction to Agile using SpiraPlan (1)
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The first step is to define the project’s requirements.
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This is a hierarchical list of all the features that the system needs
to fulfill (in some methodologies they are called user stories)
They can be entered by hand, imported from a variety of tools:
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MS-Office documents such as Excel, Word or Project
 Modeling tools such as RequisitePro or Enterprise Architect
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They can be prioritized, contain attachments, be cross-linked
and have project-specific attributes
Don’t worry about getting it all right first time, this is Agile, so the
requirements will evolve during the project!
Define
Requirements
© Copyright 2006-2014, Inflectra Corporation
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Introduction to Agile using SpiraPlan(2)
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Next, plan out the project’s high-level schedule
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Include the major releases, minor releases and optionally builds
and iterations depending on desired granularity
You can now assign the different lower-level requirements to
each of the iterations so that it is possible to start planning the
features that will be developed in each release and iteration
based on customer priority and business value.
In some methodologies (e.g. Scrum) the requirements list is
called the Project Backlog and iterations are called Sprints.
Define
Requirements
Release
Planning
© Copyright 2006-2014, Inflectra Corporation
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Introduction to Agile using SpiraPlan(3)
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Now you start the iteration planning (for the first one):
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Decompose the requirements into detailed project tasks that can
be prioritized and individually estimated. These estimates can be
then compared against the top-down requirement estimate
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Assign any defects that were raised in the previous
release/iteration into the current iteration for resolution
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Potentially re-assign the requirements and tasks to different
iterations, if there is not enough time/resources to support the
planned functionality
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In some methodologies (Scrum) this is called ‘sprint planning’
Define
Requirements
Release
Planning
© Copyright 2006-2014, Inflectra Corporation
Iteration
Planning
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Introduction to Agile using SpiraPlan(4)
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Now you can schedule the team members and load
balance the task resourcing allocation:
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Assign the discrete project tasks and defects to the members of
the development team staffed to the iteration
Team members view their individual schedule and task
assignments to determine if they can perform all the tasks
The detailed task schedule is updated by the team members,
with the release/iteration schedule reflecting the updates so that
the management can make changes to the master schedule
Define
Requirements
Release
Planning
© Copyright 2006-2014, Inflectra Corporation
Iteration
Planning
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Schedule &
Resourcing
Introduction to Agile using SpiraPlan (5)
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Real-time status of the progress of the iteration and
release is visible by the management during execution:
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The team members update the actual effort, remaining effort and
predicted end-date values of their various tasks as they
complete the assigned workload
When tasks are completed, or if exception conditions occur (late
starting tasks, late finishing tasks, overruns, etc.), the status of
the overall iteration and release is updated to give early
indication of needed management intervention
In addition the progress of the tasks is linked back to the original
requirements, so there is full requirements traceability
Define
Requirements
Release
Planning
© Copyright 2006-2014, Inflectra Corporation
Schedule &
Resourcing
Iteration
Planning
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Tracking
&
Reporting
Feature Walkthrough
© Copyright 2006-2014, Inflectra Corporation
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Personalized ‘My Page’
Upon login to
SpiraPlan, you are
presented with a
personalized
‘dashboard’ of all
your key information,
consolidated onto a
single page for you
to take immediate
action.
RSS Feeds of your
information are
available
© Copyright 2006-2014, Inflectra Corporation
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Project Home Page
Each project has a
dashboard home-page
that summarizes all of
the information
regarding the project
into a comprehensive,
easily digestible form.
It provides a “one-stopshop” for people
interested in
understanding the
overall status and
health of the project at
a glance.
It includes key graphs
such as task burndown
and team velocity
© Copyright 2006-2014, Inflectra Corporation
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Project Portfolio Management
Projects in SpiraPlan can be organized into Project Groups that belong to a
common organization, customer or division. This allows you to view a summary
project group dashboard that lets you view the aggregate status of the group as
whole as well as compare the relative health of the different projects in the group.
© Copyright 2006-2014, Inflectra Corporation
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Requirements Management
You have the ability to create and manage project requirements, user stories
and use cases in a hierarchical organization. Requirements can be
prioritized, estimated and also associated with a specific release. Each
requirement is displayed with its associated development task progress.
© Copyright 2006-2014, Inflectra Corporation
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Requirements Elaboration (Tasks)
Each requirement can then be decomposed into its low-level assignable
work items called ‘tasks’. Each can be separately estimated to validate the
overall high-level requirement story-point estimate.
© Copyright 2006-2014, Inflectra Corporation
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Release Planning
You have the ability to create a master release schedule containing all the
major milestone releases together with the individual iterations – smaller
releases of the system delivered every 4-6 weeks.
© Copyright 2006-2014, Inflectra Corporation
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Iteration Planning
The requirements (user stories), tasks and outstanding incidents (bugs,
issues) can be scheduled against the different iterations in the release.
The system will calculate the available effort as requirements are added.
© Copyright 2006-2014, Inflectra Corporation
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Agile / Scrum Planning Board
The Planning Board
allows teams to easily
visualize the
requirements, tasks and
incidents assigned to
each iteration.
You can drill-down to
see the items assigned
to each developer in
iteration for loadbalancing.
Drag-and-drop editing
and color-coding
maximize efficiency.
© Copyright 2006-2014, Inflectra Corporation
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Task Progress Tracking
SpiraPlan provides the ability to edit assign and track the project tasks. You
can search, filter and sort the list of tasks to quickly find those that are
behind schedule or are late starting.
This allows you to track the progress of the tasks in the system and
determine if tasks are suffering from schedule overrun or estimate inflation.
In addition you can compare actuals for continuous process improvement.
© Copyright 2006-2014, Inflectra Corporation
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Resource Tracking
Once the requirements, tasks and incidents have been scheduled against
the iteration plan, you can use the Resource Tracking screens to view the
total assigned workload for the members of the project and determine the
resource assignments and perform load balancing if necessary.
© Copyright 2006-2014, Inflectra Corporation
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Bug / Issue Tracking
The system provides the ability to create, edit, assign, track, manage and
close incidents (i.e. bugs, issues, risks, defects, enhancements) that are
raised during the testing of the software system under development.
© Copyright 2006-2014, Inflectra Corporation
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Document Management
All documents and web links uploaded to the system are available in the
integrated document management system. This allows you to organize the
documents into folders, categorize by document types and associate with
meta-tags. Once uploaded, users can search, sort and filter the documents
as well as find dynamically related items through the meta-tag hyperlinks.
© Copyright 2006-2014, Inflectra Corporation
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Document Version Tracking
Once uploaded to the central knowledge repository, revisions to the
documents can be uploaded so that there is complete audit trail of all
changes made to artifacts and associated documentation in the project.
© Copyright 2006-2014, Inflectra Corporation
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Instant Messaging & Collaboration
SpiraPlan includes an integrated instant-messenger that lets users
collaborate and communicate in real-time regardless of geographic location.
The discussions can be codified and tagged against specific artifacts in the
system, so that they become part of the artifact discussion thread.
© Copyright 2006-2014, Inflectra Corporation
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Customizable Incident Fields
You can customize each of the fields used in the Incident tracking module to
suit your own business needs - including incident type, status, priority and
severity. You can even associate your own color schemes with the different
priorities and severities.
© Copyright 2006-2014, Inflectra Corporation
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Customizable Workflows & Notifications
Different types of incident,
requirement and task can
follow their own
customized workflow. This
allows you to tailor
SpiraPlan to the business
processes used by your
organization. Each
workflow consists of a
customizable set of steps
and transitions.
In addition each transition
can be used to send email
notifications to the
detector, owner or users
in a certain project group.
© Copyright 2006-2014, Inflectra Corporation
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Attachments & Screenshot Capture
You can upload document attachments to Requirements, Tasks, Releases
and Incidents in the system. Each of these artifacts includes an attachment
view that allows users to view the existing attachments, delete an existing
attachment and upload new documents from their workstation.
In addition, there is a built-in screen capture utility for quickly adding
screenshots to a test execution or incident report
© Copyright 2006-2014, Inflectra Corporation
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Software Configuration Management (SCM)
SpiraPlan allows you to link your existing software configuration
management (SCM) repositories to a particular project. When this is done,
you can browse the contents of the repository (folders, files and revisions)
directly in the SpiraPlan web interface.
© Copyright 2006-2014, Inflectra Corporation
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Source Code Integration
In addition to being able to view the contents of the source code repository,
using SpiraPlan you can link artifacts in the system to specific source code
revisions. This allows you to associate implemented requirements,
completed tasks or resolved defects/incidents with the corresponding code
changes. This provides end-to-end traceability from requirements to software
code.
© Copyright 2006-2014, Inflectra Corporation
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Build Management
SpiraPlan provides the ability to integrate with continuous integration build
servers such as Hudson and CruiseControl so that the status of builds can
be recorded in SpiraPlan and linked to source code revisions and incidents.
This provides traceability for each build, so that you can see what was
changed in each build and what was fixed.
© Copyright 2006-2014, Inflectra Corporation
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Customizable Reporting Dashboard
SpiraPlan includes an
extensive reports library that
can display information such
as Requirements Progress,
Release Plan Status, Task
Progress and Incident Status.
SpiraPlan allows you to build
a customized reporting
dashboard featuring your
frequently-used graphs,
charts and reports.
The graphs available include:
Project Velocity, Burndown,
Burnup, Bug Discovery
Rates, and Incident Aging.
Supported formats include
HTML, XML, Word, Excel.
© Copyright 2006-2014, Inflectra Corporation
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Timecard Submission
SpiraPlan includes a built-in timecard entry system that lets developers
quickly and easily enter the time spent each day on their assigned tasks and
incidents.
© Copyright 2006-2014, Inflectra Corporation
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Change History Tracking
All of the changes made to a particular artifact in the system are tracked by
SpiraPlan, so that at any time you can view the complete audit trail of all the
changes made to an artifact, including the date of the change, who made the
change, and what information was changed.
SpiraPlan features full version-control capabilities that allow you to rollback
specific changes and revert the artifact back to a prior revision.
© Copyright 2006-2014, Inflectra Corporation
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Artifact Associations
Each requirement can be linked to an unlimited number of other
requirements, incidents and source code revisions, providing
traceability between related artifacts. For example a change request
incident that turns into a new requirement can be associated to
preserve the pedigree of the requirement.
© Copyright 2006-2014, Inflectra Corporation
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Custom Properties
In addition to the built-in fields that are associated with each type of
artifact, you can also define custom properties for each type of
artifact in the system.
The system supports a variety of different field types including: text,
rich-text, dropdown lists, user selectors, and date-fields
© Copyright 2006-2014, Inflectra Corporation
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Visual Studio & Eclipse IDE Integration
Developers can work on assigned requirements, tasks and incidents directly
inside their Integrated Development Environment (IDE).
SpiraPlan has plug-ins available for both Eclipse and Visual Studio.
Research has shown that allowing developers to use the same tool to
develop their code and manage their workload enhances efficiency and
improves data accuracy.
© Copyright 2006-2014, Inflectra Corporation
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Email Integration
SpiraPlan has a built-in email notification engine that lets you define
custom email templates and notification events. This enables the system to
send out notifications when specific events occur (e.g. user is assigned a
test case, the priority of a requirement changes, etc.).
In addition, SpiraPlan can connect to your email system and retrieve users’
comments and attach them to the appropriate artifact in the system. It can
also create new incidents directly from emails, saving users’ time.
© Copyright 2006-2014, Inflectra Corporation
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Integration / Migration Options
© Copyright 2006-2014, Inflectra Corporation
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Integration Overview

SpiraPlan has a very flexible architecture and has been integrated
with a variety of external tools and systems:
Various Tools
Requirements
MS-Office
Legacy Data
Subversion
Source Code
SpiraPlan
Requirements
Releases
Tasks
Defects
Documents
Git / Mercurial
Source Code
Configuration Management
© Copyright 2006-2014, Inflectra Corporation
Bugzilla
Defect-Tracking
Visual Studio
Defect-Tracking
Jira
Defect-Tracking
FogBugz
Defect-Tracking
Selenium-RC
Eclipse
Functional
Task Mgt
Testing
TestComplete
Visual Studio
Functional &
Task Mgt
Load Testing
Development Environment
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Integration with Build Servers
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SpiraPlan® is able to connect to your continuous integration (CI) build
server to link revisions and defects with continuous builds:
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Currently Available:
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Hudson
Jenkins
Planned:
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CruiseControl
TeamCity
Atlassian Bamboo
© Copyright 2006-2014, Inflectra Corporation
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Integration with Bug-Tracking Systems
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SpiraPlan® is able to leverage your existing investments in
requirements management and bug tracking systems:
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Bug / Issue Tracking
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Synchronize
Synchronize
Synchronize
Synchronize
Synchronize
Synchronize
Synchronize
incidents with Atlassian JIRA
incidents with Bugzilla
incidents with FogBugz
incidents with Mantis
incidents with Microsoft Team Foundation Server
incidents with AxoSoft OnTime
incidents with IBM Rational ClearQuest and RTC
© Copyright 2006-2014, Inflectra Corporation
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Integration with Requirements Mgt Systems

SpiraPlan® is able to leverage your existing investments in
requirements management and UML modeling systems:
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Synchronize requirements with IBM Rational RequisitePro
Synchronize requirements with Sparx Enterprise Architect
Synchronize requirements with Jama Contour
Synchronize requirements with IBM DOORS
Synchronize user stories with Version One
© Copyright 2006-2014, Inflectra Corporation
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Integration with SCM Systems
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SpiraPlan® is able to leverage your existing investments in Software
Configuration Management (SCM) systems:
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Current:
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Integration with Subversion repositories
Integration with CVS repositories
Integration with Microsoft TFS repositories
Integration with Microsoft VSS repositories
Integration with Mercurial distributed repositories
Integration with GIT distributed repositories
Integration with Perforce repositories
Planned
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Integration with Rational ClearCase repositories
Integration with StarTeam repositories
© Copyright 2006-2014, Inflectra Corporation
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Integration with Developer IDEs

SpiraPlan® is able to integrate with your developers’
Integrated Development Environment (IDE):
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Ability to manage requirements, tasks and incidents inside
Microsoft Visual Studio
Ability to manage requirements, tasks and incidents inside
the Eclipse IDE
© Copyright 2006-2014, Inflectra Corporation
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Questions?
Please contact sales@inflectra.com if you have additional questions.
© Copyright 2006-2014, Inflectra Corporation
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Legal Notices

DISCLAIMER: All product comparison diagrams have been made
on the basis of information available on respective product websites.
The analysis and views expressed in the diagrams and the
information made available are purely those of Inflectra
Corporation. It is possible that competing products have additional
features not mentioned on the product websites.
© Copyright 2006-2014, Inflectra Corporation
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