I'd like to start by saying, I rarely give 10's on anything, almost always 9's, the main reason for my 10 rating is the support I've received from this team/company. BigTime Software has been well suited for our company b/c it's giving a window into the project budget and time frames to our Project Managers to proactively manage their projects and look for areas to improve and celebrate with support staff. I would say efficiency in time management. BigTime Software is not an accounting software and I love that about it. We were looking for a tool for staff to manage their projects and stay on budget and track time and generate invoices all in one place and we've found that with BigTime Software.
The Atlassian Jira Align (formerly AgileCraft) tools help keep our scrum teams moving in the right direction. It gives Sr. Executives visibility into the progress of our digital transformation efforts. It provides information to our program manager to create the necessary artifacts to justify continued funding of our initiatives. It also supports the SAFe framework, along with some others. And the Atlassian Jira Align (formerly AgileCraft) tools provide integration to other tools that we use in our portfolio.
Effective Sprint planning : Sprint planning can be done using Planning Poker in AgileCraft by clicking Team > Manage > Other > Estimation Games very effectively for distributed teams.
Team Capacity Allocation Report: After tasks are created at team or program level, the report from AgileCraft cab be pulled and can be verified that no team member is under or over allocated. A report can be generated by navigating to Team > Manage > Assign Tasks.
Effective Requirement trace-ability: To maintain requirements trace-ability follow the steps below:
Upload test cases against the story/requirement. once uploaded test cases will be visible under that story
Execute Test cases in AgileCraft and mark them as Pass/Fail based on the actual outcome
Based on test results, The acceptance criterion's can be marked as “Pass” or “Fail” & if marked failed corresponding defect can be logged & can be attached with the story
So against each story we can easily see whether all test cases been executed or not & which acceptance criterion's are failed & how many defects are in open or close state.
Daily Scrum: In AgileCraft, the option to run a daily stand-up is available from Team > Manage > Daily Standups. Selecting the sprint number opens the daily stand-up meeting window in which each team member's tasks are visible and hours can be burned against them. Conduct Scrum meetings in AgileCraft, and burn each associate hour against the tasks created during the meeting. The burn-down chart can be generated & viewed during the stand-up to check whether the team is on track.
For some types of projects, we are unable to use BigTime's invoicing feature. It would be nice if we could further customize invoices to fit our needs. We still have to use Quickbooks to complete certain invoices.
Being able to create Purchase Orders in BigTime would be extremely useful to us. We currently use Quickbooks for this.
The initial ticket creation screen lacks some important features, such as assigning "point values" (a measure of effort needed for the ticket).
The browser needs to be manually refreshed to see new tickets, which can make things confusing when several people in a meeting are simultaneously creating tickets.
The interface on some smaller portions of the software are sometimes difficult to understand.
Overall most areas of the software are easy to use. I tend to spend a lot of time in analytics and reports. Those are not as user friendly, in my opinion, and could use some improvements. I think it just takes time to get familiar with where items are stored in the program and what changes affect what.
Most of the things are easily manageable except certain things that are hidden and you need to ask teammates who are aware of how they can link attachements in the comment section and so on.
The support is amazing! They are always available through the chat interface in the program. Each support person has fully answered my questions the first time. I have had a positive experience with each inquiry. It is very important to me that I am able to get instant access to help so that I can make the most of the software and all of its capabilities.
Overall support from Jira team is good. It comes at an additional price but it is very efficient. There are no long wait times, you get a dedicated team to look into your issues. The support is available throughout the year and they keep a record of your issues. Overall we are very satisfied with the support they have provided us over the years, it has been very effective for the price that we pay.
I touched on this briefly, in another survey section, but my implementation manager, Kevin, was exceptional. The actual implementation process took 3 months, not 1 before I was comfortable rolling it out to staff. We also had to wait/schedule time and coordinate for our custom xml. invoice to be generated and in a place we felt comfortable sending it out to clients. In the end I was very satisfied, but during the first few months it was challenging.
I liked the client management, but it didn't do time tracking, billing or syncing with quickbooks. It was too robust for my needs. I tried it for the client management and thought I might use it along with bigtime, but it was too cumbersome and would involve too much double entry. And it didn't track time or bill which are necessary functions
Microsoft Azure Devops won't have the major functionality of software management like Jira. The customization provided by Jira is having a cutting edge over any project management tool. Adds-on and Plugins feature in the Jira Tool make it as perfect as desired task management tool for any company. One of the best Agile based Project Management Tools.
The product is useful for faster billing and efficient timesheet logs. I do like the report features however there are many options and can be overwhelming for the user. It is most helpful to set up reports speaking to an agent to ensure the right fields are set, etc.
Before BigTime, we were using Excel to track everything, creating invoices, and run reports. Getting on BigTime has saved us tons of time and effort which equates to dollars saved on labor.
From a legal standpoint, BigTime has allowed us to be organized and prepared in the event we would need to present financial details to anyone.
It has positively impacted our tech teams, allowing them to better organize the tasks and items they are working on and has greatly improved their ability to communicate & review these tasks with other teams.
I believe it negatively impacted other departments as lengthy training was required by many associates to attempt using the tool, only to find out it didn't meet our needs, therefore much time was wasted.
