Quality and Project Management

Rally 5.6
Rally Software (www.rallydev.com)

Rally's Richard Leavitt & Don Hazell

Thanks to zero footprint service providing functionality, up-to-date systems management, and customer support, Rally Software has a clear shot at becoming the Salesforce.com for agile project managers and developers. Its UI is so slick that onlookers might think it's running as a native application.

Rally's aggressive ASP business model works best for agile, distributed development teams not afraid to realize the performance gains and reduced administrative headaches. It stays out of the way of project participants with its effortless design while stealthily structuring the participants with agile project management best practices. If this is what the Rally developers can do with a Web 1.0 interface, I can't wait to see what they dream up with a decked out AJAX-enabled UI.

—Mike Riley

Productivity Award Winners

CollabNet Enterprise Edition
CollabNet (www.collab.net)

Out of the box, CollabNet Enterprise Edition provides everything you need to manage projects: Mailing lists, discussion forums, issue tracking, and document and source repositories. It layers project management for tracking of multiple projects, provides project dashboards for easy project inspection and task tracking, and reporting facilities for all of the above. Importing/exporting into Microsoft Project, Excel, and Word, makes it easy for stakeholders to participate.

—Mik Kersten

QACenter Enterprise Edition 5.1
Compuware (www.compuware.com/products/qacenter)

Compuware's QACenter bundles and integrates several tools into a comprehensive application lifecycle solution: QARun/TestPartner for automated functional and regression testing, Reconcile for requirements management, Track-Record for defect tracking and QADirector for overall test management. This integrated approach keeps technology implementation issues to a minimum while focusing on assessing and delivering the information to the business with minimal friction.

—Sylvain Chery

TargetProcess Suite 1.4
TargetProcess (www.targetprocess.com)

TargetProcess Suite 1.4 provides small, possibly distributed teams, a central repository for their project's process artifacts. The team can plan its iterations and tests and track its progress. The TargetProcess Suite offers an easy-to-navigate browser interface that lets the team choose which artifacts it wants to create and track. The product links requirements, test cases, and iterations seamlessly. It also has a simple defect tracking system.

—Gary Pollice