Project portfolio management (PPM) company Daptiv has announced a new Agile PPM solution that will attempt to provide additional developer value by integrating real-time project data from Agile development tools. Daptiv's market proposition is to allow clients that are using both traditional and Agile methodologies to create a 'single source of truth' for executive reporting and decision-making, without disrupting the culture and work practices of an Agile team.

First among Daptiv's new offerings integrated into its PPM solutions is Rally Software's Agile development tools. The company says that given the widespread adoption of Agile practices, project management leaders are struggling to redefine their roles to focus less on planning and controlling and more on providing an environment that allows Agile projects to succeed. However, even with this willingness to adopt Agile, integrating Agile projects into a PPM framework is often fraught with difficulty, and portfolio-focused software development managers are often faced with reconciling different (and often conflicting) methodologies, metrics, and controls.

Furthermore, says Daptive, the rise of 'best-of-breed' Agile development tools has led to islands of information being created outside of PPM tools used for executive decision-making.



"Perhaps the clearest sign of the mainstreaming of Agile is the abandonment of orthodoxy -- teams are puzzling out the mix of methodologies and combining them to fit within their organizational realities, blending Agile and non-Agile techniques and practices to create a hybrid methodology that fits larger organizations," stated Forrester Research report: "Agile Development: Mainstream Adoption Has Changed Agility", January 2010. The report continues, "Other changes, such as new team dynamics and the redefinition of roles such as the business analyst, show the genuine force behind Agile adoption."

Unlike rigid PPM tools, Daptiv says it solves these challenges with a solution that can incorporate many different methodologies used within an organization to provide the predictability and accountability that executive stakeholders need to run their business. By allowing portfolio managers to work with a mix of project types and development methodologies, Daptiv claims to allow customers to build project portfolios that leverage traditional waterfall and Agile-based methods based on the needs of a project. This flexibility delivers executive visibility into project health without disrupting the culture and work practices of an Agile team.