Agile Hive vs. PTC Windchill RV&S

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

PTC Integrity is an excellent source code management and version control tool, and I would suggest anyone to use it for that purpose. We can even define our workflows using individual forms for implementing Change Management, Defect Management and Access management requests. If properly used, this tool is great for managing our code for very long periods, considering my 4-5 years of usage. Though the UI could be better, and integration with some application servers could be better implemented, this tool is a good tool.

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.

• Helps to advance carefully through complicated and delicate process hives.
• Improve thereby our time-to-market knowledge transfers along our portfolio.
• Enhances the performances of single step in processes as well as the processes.
• Allows for unprecedented overview in broads and in depths.

• 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

• It can be overwhelming with the number of tabs, functions and ways to achieve the same result. The average user may struggle with learning the tool.
• The text editing in Integrity is weak and does not provide many options. Because of this, many user decide to use MS word instead, to document requirements.

Incentivized

I do not make decisions on what tool my company uses. I am just the user of the tool and such decisions are not handled by me. If I were to make such decisions, I would definitely renew MKS, considering the amount of data we have stored in MKS and the current number of users who are familiar with the system

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

PTC Integrity comparatively could be considered a nice Source code management, Version controlling tool and could be compared with tools like StarTeam. If the integration to move/migrate code could be integrated into this tool, it would become an extremely powerful tool.

Incentivized

PTC Integrity administration can be somewhat daunting. They have been able to help with every question that I have submitted. Their support website is very easy to understand and submit questions and their phone support is wonderful

Incentivized

I wasn't involved in implementation.

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

I think the reason that PTC Integrity was initially chosen is that it was the best product available in the mix at the time. This coupled with the PTC deal on multiple products was a no brainer based on the size and scope of potential users.

Incentivized

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

• MKS Integrity has proved to be particularly useful in the software development process by increasing employee effieciency
• MKS integrity has also made software development a very efficient process and makes feature releases and bug fixing a lot easier
• In addition to the above, our organization has been able to support manufacturing easily by reverting to a previous software version in case of an emergency.
• It has also led to faster time to market for new products.

Incentivized