Serena Takes Agile to the Enterprise

Serena Software is introducing a new program to help enterprise IT organizations quickly adopt and integrate agile software development practices.

The program, introduced July 31 and called Agile in the Enterprise, features advisory services, training and coaching services as well as two new product offerings—Serena Agile Accelerator for Mariner and Serena Agile Accelerator for TeamTrack.

Serena, a maker of ALM (application lifecycle management) tools, is promoting core processes such as agile development, according to officials at the San Mateo, Calif., company. Agile development practices encourage communication and collaboration within application development teams.

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The use of agile development is growing, but many enterprises need help implementing the process, Serena officials said. According to an independent survey commissioned by Forrester Research, one-sixth of enterprises currently use agile processes, and twice as many are aware of agile processes.

Meanwhile, Serenas PPM (project and portfolio management) solution, Serena Mariner, enables enterprises to manage IT by defining objectives, controlling risk and balancing resource demands. The product also features pre-configured agile development processes to enable organizations to get up and running quickly, the company said.

In addition, Serenas process management product, Serena TeamTrack, supports many of the processes that occur at the intersection of application development and IT operations. These processes include features such as role-based views, a graphical process designer, on-the-fly configuration, and access to real-time data from any Web browser, Serena officials said.

Meanwhile, the Serena Agile Accelerator for TeamTrack enables project leaders and scrum masters to manage backlog tasks, sprint planning and task-related project status reports. Scrum is one form of agile development.

"Over the past 12 months, agile adoption has soared among large companies, including a significant number of our own customers," said John Scumniotales, vice president of product management at Serena.

Scumniotales spent some of his formative years in the industry at Easel, which is known for having spawned some agile development methodologies. At Easel, Scumniotales helped fashion the scrum agile development methodology. Scumniotales joined Serena via its acquisition of Pacific Edge Software in 2006.

Moreover, Charlie Rudd, CEO of SolutionsIQ, an agile development and scrum training and consulting company based in Redmond, Wash., said that "the shift we have seen recently is that Agile is now appearing on the CIOs agenda as a top-down initiative in many organizations."

Serena offers a four-pronged approach to supporting agile development in the enterprise: advisory services; strategic partnerships with agile development training and services vendors such as SolutionsIQ; coaching on projects; and the new Serena software products that support agile development.

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