Agile has established itself as one of the premier approaches to developing software — justifiably so, for many good reasons. It provides a flexible framework for helping teams maintain a focus on the rapid delivery of software projects.

Through a process of continuous planning and feedback, the agile methodology can ensure that value is maximized throughout the development process.

Still, Agile is only as good as the tools built to leverage its depth and flexibility. One of the best tools for years has been VersionOne’s Enterprise offering. But that, too, had its shortcomings, notably its lack of built-in analytics, test management, and ideas management.

Recently, VersionOne filled the above holes via VersionOne Ultimate Edition, a new product which the vendor touts as a comprehensive agile lifecycle management platform for scaling agile organizations.

VersionOne claims the Ultimate Edition provides the only integrated, out-of-the-box agile platform that allows all stakeholders — customers, managers, product owners, executives, developers, testers and analysts — to work together in a single, centralized environment.

The Ultimate Edition provides teams and stakeholders unparalleled visibility into their agile development initiatives across the organization, says Robert Holler, VersionOne president and CEO.

“An organization’s success depends on its willingness to align with the team-centered nature of agile development, across functions,” he says. “Understanding that agile impacts multiple departments across a company is crucial to the long-term success of agile organizations.”

New Agile Analytics

One of the biggest pain-points software developers face is trying to build customizable reports that convey project insights for their management teams, says Holler.

“With VersionOne Ultimate edition, we are now the only agile management platform provider offering integrated data analytics,” he says. “Our new product offers a holistic view of the entire development process, including testing and customer idea management.”

VersionOne’s analytics functionality includes: ad-hoc reporting capabilities; role-based dashboards; data analysis; and endless custom reporting and charting capabilities. These analytics tools extend visibility beyond the standard, pre-defined reports and dashboards currently available.

Hollers says Ultimate Edition allows developers to build the reports they need without purchasing a separate analytics tool – using capabilities that are easy enough for anyone to use without training.

New Testing and Ideas Management Capabilities

VersionOne Ultimate Edition also gives development teams an integrated environment for planning, tracking and reporting on both development and testing activities. Developers have visibility into regression testing activities while ensuring testing consistency across iterations, projects and releases. In addition, they can plan and track the time and effort they spend on development and testing within a sprint.

Finally, the vendor expanded its broad portfolio of free, open-source tool integration connectors by adding a connector for Hudson, a popular continuous integration solution.

The price-tag for all this added functionality is quite modest — $36 per user per month or $745 for a one-time perpetual license plus annual support and maintenance per user seat. In comparison, the Enterprise version cost $29 per user per month or $595 for a perpetual license plus annual support and maintenance per user seat.