Agile Hive vs. AgileBox by DevSamurai

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

Well suited:

• Estimation of user stories in agile team.
• Recording the estimations and events directly to JIRA.
• Estimations can be done without leaving JIRA.
• Best suitable in this pandemic situation as most of the people are working remotely.
• Different estimation scales are present to adapt as per the team norms for example Fibonacci, T-shirt sizing and custom estimations as well.

Scenarios where it is less suitable:

• Where only inbuilt chat box from DevSamurai is used. So synchronization is an issue there.
• And apart from that a consistent internet connectivity is required.

• 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.

• Usefull interface.
• Don't need any training for using guide.
• Challenging.

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

• Live chat box feature need to be improvised as it still not robust.
• Integration module should be flexible enough to stick with other workflow tools.

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

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

The only application we use in planning poker studies in the organization.

Incentivized

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

• Estimation of user stories and updating the JIRA is automated and hence resulted in reduced efforts in poker planning.
• No need to be present under same roof for estimation, and hence a flexibility which is much required in this scenario.
• Clients can have a clear and better picture of estimation at any time with all statistics and hence customer sees more transparency.