Designing a Project Management Application for Agile Software Development

Abstract: Agile software development has emerged as a response to the rapidly changing software environment and the need to anticipate late change of requirements. An important tool for many agile methods is a projec tmanagement application with a task board to keep track of the progress. However, it can be difficult to find a project management applicationthat is suited for a workplace where development teams use different methods. The aim of this master thesis was to develop a prototype of a project management application adapted to Codemill AB where development teams use different agile methods. To achieve this, the work process of development teams were investigated, as well as existing project management applications, and the most important functionality and features from a user available point of view were identified. Two design concepts were developed based on the users’ needs. Both concepts were tested and compared by end users in order to develop a refined prototype with the best parts from both concepts. The results indicate that the development process in a workplace can vary a lot between different development teams even though their methods are inspired by the same framework. A project management application for agile software development must be flexible enough to handle these differences without becoming too complex and difficult to use. None of the investigated applications achieved this balance. This work aimed to develop a prototype of an application that fills this gap, with the users' needs in focus. The findings in this thesis are based on Codemill’s needs, however, they could also be considered by others with similar needs.