Ontic Oren

Although it took some time, I’ve decided on the tools.  As the title says, I’m going with Atlassian’s suite, plus a really nifty plugin I’ve come across called Greenhopper.  Here’s the overview:

• Create user stories in Jira.
• Create wiki page for each release (not iteration, but release).  Link up to Jira dashboard.  Provide details, necessary information, any supporting stuff available.
• Planning poker to estimate user story size.
• Prioritize user stories with drag and drop via Greenhopper.
• Drag user stories into iteration releases via Greenhopper.
• Create sub-tasks for each user story to track hours.
• Drag tasks on planning board for open, in progress and done via Greenhopper.
• Use Greenhopper to generate burn down, velocity, and other fun graphs.

Now, all that said, there are times when paper is just the way to go.  We currently have ~85 user stories, and trying to figure out the ranking really is easier when you can have paper in front of you.  Luckily, it’s easy to do both!  By exporting the issues into excel, and then using mail merge from word, finally printing to Avery postcards, I’ve got a great way to create cards.  You can use my attached user-story-cards word file if you want to create your own.