More and more companies are reaping the benefits of the agile methodology. Customers and users are more involved, teams are more engaged and solutions garner higher satisfaction from their customers. In many cases, this also means the adoption of a new tool for the project teams. Those adopting scrum are using PostIt Notes on their [Agile] Wall, Excel, Jira, Visual Studio Online or Rally to track the current and future sprint’s user stories or tasks.
The go-to project management tool has been MS Project/Project Online and is being used far and wide. Project managers are now preferring to use tools like Jira and TFS to track agile team’s activities. Visual Studio Online and Jira’s simple UI coupled with their activity planning and activity tracking features make it a favorite among team members. Project Online, Visual Studio Online and Jira each have their strengths and weaknesses.
Those organizations using Project Online for strong portfolio analysis and resource management are not able to find a competitive feature in Visual Studio Online or Jira. Conversely, Visual Studio Online (VSO) and Jira’s sprint planning and tracking is difficult to replicate in Project Online. The optimal solution would be to use Project Online during the project planning, and use VSO/Jira during work monitoring and controlling, and then again use Project Online to control schedule and cost.
Integration between Project Online and VSO or Jira allows team members to align their tool to their function and maximize efficiency. Project managers can create and manage project plans for prioritization by portfolio managers and utilization planning by resource managers. Selected project tasks in the form of a user story or activity, can be pushed to Jira or VSO project for agile poker/planning and execution. During the sprint, team members can enter new tasks or update task information, which can be pushed back to Project Online, allowing the Project Manager to control the schedule and cost.
Maximize your investments on project management tools with a simple integration and make the joy of eliminating double entry an increase in visibility and digital productivity – attend this webinar to learn how to harness the power of Agile methodology and tools with the structure of Microsoft Enterprise Project Management (EPM) on March 15, 2016  at 1400 hrs PST / 2200 hrs GMT
