VersionOne Software

Distributed task boards for distributed teams. Integration to some degree with other platforms such as ALM and ServiceNow.

Pros

It has a bunch of features and can integrate with other tools and platforms. For teams that are split up geographically, something like this is probably the best option.

Cons

It's really cumbersome and slow, and the features are not always what you want or where you expect them.

Pros

Excellent reporting tools for upper management. Can get very nice graphs showing burndown, get a detailed view of status of sprints and progress of work planned.

Cons

Unfortunetly, filling out work done on a day to day basis is time consuming and clunkly, and planning takes a long time because of the lag associated with an online service. At times after clicking on something to update, one is faced with a several second wait in order to start typing, and then the same to confirm and save the transaction. In such it makes it difficult to actually get engineers to use it consistently. A tool like this is only useful if used consistently. Unfortunetly, the complexity of it makes it more of a chore to work with and often the tool fails simply because people on our team don't want to use it.

Pros

It has a kanban board that is really handy tracking stories.
Every story or task has a lot of fields that can help you with extra information regarding the task.
It handles comunication with the whole teram through the Team Menu.

Cons

Not a con per se, but so many fields in the story, and the position they are visually organized, could make the user feels overwhelmed.

A good management for task and assignations in the project as a developer.

Pros

- Allow task documentation for several topics (links, tests, use cases, extended description, Attachments, Commits).
- Can handle several teams and projects.
- Allow planning, teams and own rooms.

Cons

- Not integration with Gitlab neither with confluence.
- The interface and the UX could be improved.

Pros

Really fresh, modern feel/UI to this application - all areas feel well polished. Also has a great feature set to go along with the UI.

Cons

Relies heavily on user interaction, like one would expect, however would be great to add some kind of notification system to notify users when their items have sat idle for certain amount of time.

This software is a good option, agile environment is the best way to planning project.

Pros

This software is nice that it is a cloud service so you can access it from work or remotely whenever needed.

Cons

I think that the fonts and formatting isn't good when writing in tasks,especially when using numbered entries, bullets, or copying and pasting.

VersionOne allows me to help track and plan work for multiple teams across my foundation. it keeps moat of my day to day information with my high level project overview information in a single platform.

Pros

VersionOne allows us to track an idea all the to completion. We use it to break projects into Epics, the stories, and then into workable tasks for our development team. Two of our teams work within sprint boundries, whikle another team uses the KanBan features. I can see the progress of either team at any given time.

Cons

The Epic or Portfolio portion of VersionOne seem to be an after thought. Not all subscriptions use them, so they are not consistently used within reporting and other functionality. We use the Epic portion to track big pieces of functionality, but have to tie them to overall projects out of the software. The tool bar is not available in all screens, so navigation can be tricky if you do not know the quirks of VersionOne.

Pros

It is one of the best project management softwares I have used. It gives you a good tracking mechanism of how many days are required, you can reduce the number of hours and see the velocity of the work progress.

Cons

It is constantly being modified, it is a good thing (and a lot of change is bad as well). I had made a suggestion on a feature, I never got my ticket answered though.

Pros

Team rooms are great for planning and tracking. Makes it easy to keep track of stories, defect, and epics.

Cons

It seems like the site changes every time you login. Although the constant improvement is appreciated, it can be frustrating when things move around frequently.

Pros

We purchased this because it was more secure than the software we used previously. It was important for us to protect the projects we were working on.

Cons

Our developers created several Google Chrome plugins to enhance the features of Version One. We needed a way to sort and color code our branded projects. We needed a way to show how old a card was getting. We needed a way to add a deadline for a card. Etc, etc.

Pros

Software did it's intended purpose. It helped track our Agile stories in an organization where Agile is 2 years into implementation.

Cons

Not intuitive or easy to use. Search function did not make sense. Data is not aligned properly and it's aesthetically clumsy.

This is the premium software when it comes to project management - esp Agile. It has the best features such as creating stories, sub-stories - ease of splitting a story into two sub- stories was superb.
Also the features such as tracking the story progress with all the test-cases, design etc being attached under/to the story was very useful feature.

Tracking the burn-down charts and velocity very helpful especially in the sprint review meetings.

Only down-side was the pricing. The top(fortune 500) companies could easily afford this - especially who had:
1) the infrastructure to host the system,
2) Users scattered all over the globe
3) A strong local network with robust firewalls.
4) A strong urge to be secure (eg the pharma or financial institutions)

But when it comes to tier- II companies, who are looking to save costs at every opportunity, maybe not prefer this...might consider JIRA Agile or others.

Pros

1. Best in class features - a comprehensive bouquet of all the necessary features.
2. Good UI and even better usability.

Cons

Only one that is pricing.

Advice to Others

If you are a company with more focus on security and reliability, look no further than this one.

Customize your own storyboard whether following methods such as scrum, kanban and agile. Each user can tinker their view and have tasks setup for easy workflow and managed deployments.

We use V1 for our tasks, event management for to-dos, and longer term projects. It's a great way to keep things separate and assigned while holding others accountable. One thing we would like to see is a timeline or calendar view with sub-tasks and an easier way to set guard rails for completion as opposed to one due date. It would also be helpful to have document share including excel, PPT, and word on here as well as integration with email and mobile.

I have used VersionOne extensively in a few of my companies. Our product managers use it to create and prioritize backlogs. Dev team leads create tasks and allocates hours to them. This then gets sorted into releases and sprints. And finally scrum masters use this to track daily progress.

Pros

Sprint planner, storyboard, burndown chart.

Have used this product for the last 5 years. Though it definitely has improved in five years and it more usable, I still find the usability of the UI very clunky and over complicated. To me it looks like a the UI is a mirror of the DB below it and this is never a good thing.

They have added Defect tracking and I am not aware of any good integration with Team Forge.

The key to good scrum teams is letting the teams collaborate and keeping out of their way. Personally I think this tool is a upper managers/project managers dream and a practitioners nightmare. Defect tracking should be done in your source collaboration tools or at least integrated well. Perhaps the integration is my companies fault, but the usability definitely is not. Last time I counted no less than for fields named ToDo.

Been systemadmin/teamcoach scaling VersionOne from 25 to 500 users over the past few years.
The tool is very flexible, and fits agile and kanban teams perfect.
It integrates with most common IDEs and lots of tools for testing, bugtracking, build etc.
Your needs can be met with different editions, spanning from the free team-edition for 10 users, to the very feature-rich ultimate edition, that can visualize products/projects/programs and the whole organization.
The company provides consultancy and really cares about your agile transforming efforts.

I've been an Agile Coach and VersionOne System Administrator for 2 years and this is one great tool. Having used other Agile Project Management tools that had a significant learning curve I can say that VersionOne is far easier for teams to pick up and learn.

VersionOne's biggest strength is that teams are able to work they way they need to without the tool getting in the way. VersionOne becomes a valuable tool that teams can leverage to manage their work and enhance their agility.

Pros

Incredibly easy to learn.
Scales easily across large organizations.
VersionOne technical and sales team go above and beyond for their clients.
Customizable.

Cons

The tool is so flexible that you really need to understand the long term impacts before making changes such as adding custom or required fields. I recommend partnering with VersionOne's technical team to optimize your configuration.

I have been a VersionOne user for 5 years and an administrator of the system for 1 year. I have also used multiple PPM tools and can say that I really like VersionOne the best. It can work for small teams all the way up to Enterprise-wide. I am a big fan of the TeamRoom feature that allows the team to focus on the work for the current iteration and the Epic Timeline. VersionOne is also working with each release to create more visual views which is really helpful for executives.

Pros

Customizable to different teams' needs
Can do both Scrum and Kanban
Built in reporting
Quick support turnaround time

Cons

Doesn't have a quick way to search via tags or labels

VersionOne helps my scrum teams be more efficient, and focused on customer delivery over process busy work. The interface is easy to learn and use, and it works pretty much like the paper boards we started using pre-VersionOne. The epics X-function working across the org, and teams rooms help improve efficiency.

Pros

Easy to Learn. Many ways to customize the overall look, and options from the org level down to the team views. The use of EPICS allows our teams to communicate and collaborate better. Using Team Rooms simplifies our group mechanics.

Cons

The VersionOne reporting and analytics are not as strong as the app itself. V1's APIs are helpful, and needed in some cases, to create management ready reporting. I Still find myself using the handy export to Excel features for reports too often.