TrustRadius Insights for Digital.ai Agility are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.
Pros
Conversations Feature: Users have found the Conversations feature in Version One particularly helpful for distributed teams, with some reviewers stating that it enhances collaboration and transparency among stakeholders.
Visualization Feature: The Visualization feature in Version One has been appreciated by users as it enables tracking forward and backward dependencies. Several reviewers mentioned that this feature helps them understand how stories are related and identify blocking issues.
Integration with GitHub: Many users highly value the integration of Version One with GitHub. They have stated that this integration automatically updates the build version to the story on Version One whenever a new build is triggered, eliminating the need for manual communication and keeping everyone updated effortlessly.
We use Digital.ai Agility extensively to track all the work done by our scrum teams. We have 6 feature teams that use this on a daily basis. The team rooms are one of the features we like best about the platform. Each team has their own team room which they use as the main way to track their daily work. The ability to group stories into Portfolio Items and track larger projects has also been very helpful to the Product Owners and managers.
Pros
Team Rooms
Support the Scrum process
Provides easy ways to keep track of the work the team is doing
Cons
Although Digital.ai Agility supports customizations, they can be somewhat cumbersome to set up and maintain
The Analytics engine's user experience for digging into the data does not have the same feel as the rest of the system and, as a result, can be hard to work with
Likelihood to Recommend
Digital.ai Agility is an ideal tool for anyone who is looking to track the work of a software development team following agile processes. It easily supports multiple teams with multiple backlogs, but also allows aggregation and rollup across those teams for larger analysis and planning.
Our team uses VersionOne as part of our agile process. It is an enterprise approved tool. Product Owners enter user stories. We do Sprint and Release planning and scheduling using VersionOne. Our backlogs are maintained in VersionOne. Defects can be entered and tracked. We use the tool for collaboration and notifications are used and team members can subscribe to various notifications. Voting is done through the tool. It has really been integrated into our SDLC process and has become a way of life for how we do things.
Pros
Backlog maintenance
Notifications
Planning for both sprints and releases
Defect tracking
Storyboards
Collaboration
Cons
Better support for our hybrid methodology where things aren't 100% agile.
Likelihood to Recommend
I feel the tool has really helped our organization embrace and adopt Agile. We were one of the first development teams within the Enterprise to do so. And since we had all team members using VersionOne and taking the training, we have been able to make this a way of life and not just another tool we through at the team. In my opinion, we are still constrained by the Enterprise and there are things that we still have to do that aren't agile but are waterfall. Sometimes it's easy to get the tool to support these and sometimes it's not. I understand that because the tools focus is on Agile teams. But it's hard to get a large enterprise to go Agile and it takes time. Our team adopted Agile over 10 years ago. The rest of the enterprise is just now catching up with us.
CollabNet VersionOne is widely used in our business by various business units. The problem that business units face without VersionOne are;
1. Multiple duplications of work
2. Project work tracking can be inaccurate.
Using this application enables real-time collaboration of multiple teams, Overview of project or backlog items, sprint by sprint analysis. These are critical metric data points that can help future workload distribution, resource allocation, and overall future project estimations. As a leader, this application gives me access to all my teams' work and progress. It is also useful when collecting metrics that help stakeholders in project increment planning.
Pros
Automated saving of changes, no records can be lost because all items are saved in real-time.
The watch function, optional but beneficial when managing multiple teams or projects.
Cons
An optional presentation mode could be good for multi-site
Built-in snipping tool
Likelihood to Recommend
CollabNet VersionOne is suitable for ongoing projects that are developed by agile teams in an agile manner. It works well for small feature teams that use kanban or sprints for the working style and project management solutions.
VU
Verified User
Analyst in Information Technology (1001-5000 employees)
We were using Jira before our portfolio decided to go for safe (scaled agile framework) ,
since Jira do not provide safe support, Version one has been chosen among other tools such as agilecraft & rally.
<p>Version one supports safe i.e Strategic
themes, budgeting, WSJF prioritization, PI planning, roadmaps, safe metrics, continuous delivery etc.</p><p>Also VersionOne can support any configuration of SAFe & it is pretty easy to configure.
</p><p>At team level we use it for release planning, sprint
planning, test management & active collaboration since teams were distributed.</p><p>Team rooms & planning rooms were very helpful to keep team focused & track progress.</p><p>
</p>
Pros
For Distributed teams, collaboration is the biggest concern. So in Version one there is awesome feature for collaboration, called ‘Conversations’ which can be used by teams to discuss work and ideas. It helps in keeping all stakeholders at same page & enhances transparency.
To track forward & backward dependencies, it has feature called Visualization which lets you trace all project activities through multiple levels to see how stories are related and can help you in identifying blocking issues/impediments.
Integrates well with GitHub so whenever new build is triggered, the build version is updated to the story on Version One. So its keeps everyone updated & no need to send mails/release notes after the deployments.
It provides good support for continuous improvement, the basic requirement for scrum teams as it has feature called “Ideas" - an idea submission and voting platform for team members.
I also found the goal page very useful, here you can list the goals for the team & leadership and track which goals are completed & which are in progress.
The team room feature offer a place to see team backlog, a storyboard for the current sprint & task board for the current sprint. This feature is there in Agilecraft s well & I found it very useful.
For sizing the stories, it includes the mini-game 'Estimably' which helps teams estimate stories anonymously. Anonymously is the key here.
Tracking team progress is easy using Sprint Tracking feature & Task board. Sprint Tracking shows the total estimates, capacity, completed hours, etc. & Task board shows which story is done, in progress & not started.
Cons
Set up is a little complicated when compared to other tools.
Version one comes with lot of features like Rally but here we don’t get customization which is there in Jira, where from workflow to issue everything can be customized based on your team/program/portfolio requirements.
I found it bit slow specifically when a particular story has test, documents tagged/attached to it.
Lot of navigation to access basic stuff. Example: if I want to go to bug attachment , there are lot of clicks & navigation need to do which should be pretty straightforward I feel.
Test Management need improvement in terms of tracking tests, team had hard time tracking regression test cases.
Support desk is not good , if contacted they will confuse you more, better google the thing you want to do rather than connecting with support desk.
Likelihood to Recommend
<p><b><u>Scenarios where it works well:</u></b></p><p>1) Retros can be very well facilitated & notes/action items
can be captured against the sprint.</p><p>2) Product Owner can effectively track the story
progress with all the test-cases, design etc.</p><p>3) Being good scaling support, it provides good visibility
across multiple teams, programs and agile portfolios, providing a centralized
environment where all our stakeholders can easily work together regardless of location.</p><p>4) It provides easy tracking all of your epics,
stories, themes, defects, tasks, tests and issues</p><p>5) I like its intuitive UI as for moving stories
around, burning hours.</p><p>6) It allows top leadership to visualize
and report their strategic plans, giving all stakeholders the relevant data
that they need to stay dedicated to the project priorities. </p><p>7) It can be easily integrated with slack
so for few teams we used slack for collaboration</p><p><b><u>Scenarios where it did not work well:</u></b>
</p><p>1) Test Management need improvement in
terms of tracking tests, team had hard time tracking regression test cases.</p><p>2) Version one comes with lot of features like
Rally but here we don’t get customizations which is there in Jira where from workflow
to issue everything can be customized based on your team/program/portfolio
requirements.</p><p></p><p>3) Lot of navigation to access basic
stuff. Example I want to go to bug attachment , there are lt of clicks &
navigation need to do which should be pretty straightforward I feel.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p>
VersionOne is what our teams use track stories and plan our sprints across over 25 sprint teams in multiple locations including Seattle, WA, San Francisco, CA, San Jose, CA, Ottawa, Canada, and Bucharest, Romania. Using VersionOne we are able to plan and coordinate to deliver our complex solution to our customers.
Pros
VersionOne makes it easy to create stories and move them across teams, as needed.
VersionOne's team view gives the team a clear view of the work to be done, work in progress, and work completed. This is particularly useful to have as a visual aid in stand ups or during reviews.
VersionOne allows the team to track capacity and work for each story which is useful to determining if the story is still on track.
Cons
Saving of changes is inconsistent. Sometimes the changes appear to save automatically and other times the user needs to click the "Apply" button. Until the user is familiar with when this needs to happen, work can easily be lost.
This may be a setup configuration issue, but it would be good to be able to set the default team when creating stories. Too often stories are created and the user forgets to enter the team and they need to search the entire database for the story that was just created.
Likelihood to Recommend
VersionOne is fairly well suited for Scrum, but it is not useful for Kanban.
Several departments were using VersionOne as a project management tool.
Pros
Helps with management of projects
Helps with dependency management
Allows stats tracking
Cons
VersionOne is not a very flexible tool to recode. When engineers want to integrate pull requests, this is a hard task.
This tool also has stats tracking limitations. Project managers should be able to track as little or as much as they would like without having to use VersionOne and another tool, such as an Excel spreadsheet, to get the job done.
Likelihood to Recommend
<p>Good: VersionOne allows teams to keep track of the status of their work. It also allows for the management of granual level project tasks.</p><p>Not so good: Engineers like to customize tools to suit their particular needs, VersionOne does not allow a great deal of customization.</p>
VU
Verified User
Project Manager in Information Technology (1001-5000 employees)
We use Version One across our entire organization. As a web design and digital marketing firm, it helps us to manage tasks and track progress, and it enables us to more easily implement Agile processes. Our organization is somewhat new to Agile, and Version One makes it easier to keep us on track.
Pros
Assigning backlogs is simple once you're in a project. The ability to add backlogs in line is helpful when you just want to list out new backlogs before adding your user stories.
The ability to sort by different types of data, so that you only view exactly what you want to see is very helpful, especially during sprint planning meetings.
The customizability of the app enables the user to adjust certain criteria based on their team's needs. For example, adjusting sprint length.
Cons
As a whole, Version One is not user-friendly. Without an intense familiarity of the app, it's often difficult to find things you're looking for. Given the complex reality of the customizability, I'm not sure if there's a way to make the interface simpler.
I would like the ability to add attachments and imbedded images more simply within user stories. Sometimes, It'd be helpful to have the ability to add a screenshot of a page at specific points within your user story.
From the Version One homepage, there is no clear CTA for users to login.
Likelihood to Recommend
In the case of our organization, it has helped me, as a PM, assign tasks/backlogs to our web designers and developers. However, if an organization uses outside contractors (as we often do for development), it would be difficult to track progress in V1. If we were to invite our contractors to use V1, it would be difficult for them to use since it's not very user friendly.
Aaron's has used VersionOne for years (well before my time here) across the entire IT organization. VersionOne was/is used for project management, sprint tracking, defect and backlog records, and test case management.
Pros
Storyboard view
Ability to customize fields in backlogs and defects
Ease of learning the tool
Cons
VersionOne speed is not the best and is not consistent
The Search function could be better, it returns a TON of clutter
Test case management is poor, to the point where no one here recommends VersionOne for test
No drag and drop capability for attachments
Text editor has real problems, limited formatting, balky pasting of images
Likelihood to Recommend
VersionOne is pretty good at the project management level, and at representing the work being done in a sprint.
It's not good at all for test case management. It's just not built for software test. Although from some perspectives, it is beneficial to have tests embedded in the work item.
In Aaron's installation, teams could not customize V1 storyboards and items - changes were all or nothing for the site, so it's not suited to team-by-team customization.
