Agile Hive vs. Aurea Process vs. CucumberStudio, from SmartBear

Agile Hive is used for our value train
within a SAFe setup. Every quarter we organize a so-called Product Increment
(PI) Planning, where we plan all Features and Enablers in Agile Hive.
Based on the priority of the Product Manager all teams plan their Features and
Enablers accordingly to the sprints that are determined by the Release Train
Engineer and set up in Agile Hive. The teams then create User Stories and
estimate them and based on their sprint velocity (defined in Agile Hive)
Product Owners can see how many Features and Enablers are realistic in one
quarter (Product Increment). Further, dependencies across teams can be defined
and made visible in Agile Hive, so that the plan is feasible. Without Agile
Hive it would be hard or impossible to plan across several teams within a value
train and to manage all dependencies. Additionally, with Agile Hive the plan is
more realistic, so what can be achieved within one quarter in product
development.

Incentivized

The tool has potential. Its capabilities and visual aspects could be considered rather basic but this might improve, particularly if the business intelligence/analytics aspect is leveraged. Once running well, it could allow (perhaps smaller) companies to successfully improve their customers' experiences through digitalizing customer journey - and we all know that customer loyalty goes a long way. However, whether or not the tool is comprehensive enough to deliver this for larger companies with more complex, multi- and omni-channel interactions is yet to be seen...

Incentivized

HipTest is good and helpful to create and run functional regressions but it is more complicated to use this tool to create and run API testing scenarios (it does not mean it can not be done). This tool is definitively not appropriate for running performance testing scenarios.

Incentivized

• Roadmapping in terms of defining epics and planning them across a timeline and across teams.
• Showing dependencies within teams and across teams and over time horizon.
• Create transparency throughout the product organization and teams about what is planned.

• Face-lifted platforms: CX Messenger (formerly Sonic), CX Monitor (formerly Actional), CX Process (formerly Savvion)
• User-friendly UI
• Relatively painless implementation

Incentivized

• Good integration with Jira
• Includes integration with different tools for different porpuses
• You can build your own framework to automate scenarios and make it work with Hiptest

Incentivized

• I believe the training and support could be more hands on and easier.
• The Agile Hive - SAFe in Jira product can be a bit robust to understand.
• Having Knowledge transfer videos can help more than documentations.

Incentivized

• Standard edition is significantly lighter touch than the (pricier) Enterprise version
• There are similar solutions on the market that are competitively prices and offer positive user experience
• Data migration can be tricky at times

Incentivized

• UX is not too obvious and easy (like generating a data table in a scenario or including a scenario in a test run) but you can get used to it relatively easy by playing around with the options, also the documentation is helpful.
• To get extra functionalities you have to pay for them separately.

Incentivized

It has in general a good usability, but there are some downsides, the big picture view of the entire product increment is too static, so there is no zoom in or zoom out. Mostly throughout planning it is necessary to zoom in to a sprint level and manage the user stories there. Also, the pig picture view has some limitations, because you cannot read the entire user story name (boxes are too small).

Incentivized

The tool includes a basic but complete documentation that can be very helpful to get started using the tool. The UX sometimes does not feel very easy to understand but after some use you can get familiar without reading the documentation. The webinars are not very useful for using the tool, I have seen a couple of them and they are actually focused on promoting their HipTest product to new users instead of being useful and educational for current users.

Incentivized

With Jira Software alone it is also possible to plan a SAFe product increment planning, but it would be nearly impossible to see the overall big picture of all product teams involved in a release train. So, the planning on sprint level for one team would be more efficient, but the planning for a whole quarter with all dependencies across teams would be not feasible to present. Therefore, Agile SAFe enables value trains an efficient way to plan a product increment.

Incentivized

• More transparency.
• Better product decisions.
• Saving time and resources.
• Less critical dependencies.

• As our customers vary in size and maturity, the ROI ranges accordingly.
• For younger, smaller businesses this is a useful tool. Digitalization of he customer journey has certainly helped save time and efforts in many cases.
• For more mature market players the tool is not always comprehensive enough. Dashboard and report personalization take time and efforts, and sometimes it feels that a dedicated BI tool would be a more suitable solution.

Incentivized

• It helps to have organization in our scenarios.
• It helps to get regressions done faster than doing it manually
• It helps to graphically see the progress and results of executions.

Incentivized