Tasktop Introduces Agile Planner for Eclipse at Agile 2010

ORLANDO, Fla., Aug. 9 /PRNewswire/ -- Agile 2010 -- Tasktop Technologies (www.tasktop.com), creators of Eclipse Mylyn and the leader in Agile Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) integration and productivity, today announced the Tasktop Agile Planner, a new product that leverages Mylyn connectors to provide Agile teams the ability to manage existing defect and project management systems with planning support that spans across multiple vendors' solutions.  The planner provides a rich desktop client and Eclipse-based user interface for accessing Tasktop Certified Agile project management integrations, including ThoughtWorks Studios' Mingle, IBM Rational Team Concert, Rally, CollabNet's ScrumWorks, Atlassian's JIRA and VersionOne.  

The Tasktop Agile Planner provides a unique Eclipse-based native user interface for Windows, Mac and Linux that enhances the web-based interfaces of those solutions and additionally provides offline access to plans. Only the Tasktop Agile Planner offers cross-repository planning facilities that enable user stories to be associated with defects stored in external systems, such as HP Quality Center and Bugzilla. The Eclipse Integrated Development Environment (IDE) integration supports automatic linking between plan items and source code artifacts, and enables developers and team leads to create and monitor Agile development plans directly from Eclipse, making it effortless to maintain project status awareness and keep plans up-to-date.

"The problem of plans becoming disconnected from development activity is rampant in enterprise adoptions of Agile," said Mik Kersten, CEO of Tasktop Technologies and creator of the open source Eclipse Mylyn project. "The Tasktop Agile Planner addresses this by ensuring that all ALM systems involved with planning are linked and accessible directly from the Eclipse IDE, where developers and team leads spend the majority of their workday.  When combined with the Tasktop developer tools this additional level of integration enhances the best-of-breed Agile project management solutions that we integrate with by ensuring that plans are a real-time representation of development activity."

Tasktop Agile Planner provides project managers, developers and quality assurance team members with a lightweight yet complete planning platform for managing the entire Agile planning process. Core features of Tasktop Agile Planner include:

• Task Planner: supports release and iteration planning that spans multiple systems, for instance, a plan can include a story in Rally that is linked to defects in a JIRA repository (which also are displayed on the plan).
• Task Board: provides a visual display of tasks not started, in progress and complete, right in the developer's IDE.
• Burn Down Charts: provides a graphical representation of outstanding work over time.
• Time Tracking: automates the tracking of time spent on stories and the ability to view actual time tracking information recorded in the IDE on the plan.

Availability

The Tasktop Agile Planner is available now in a beta version through Tasktop's early access program, with general availability set for mid-September. Learn more at http://tasktop.com/agile or contact Tasktop at http://tasktop.com/about/contactus/ to join the early access program. Tasktop will be demonstrating the product at its booth at Agile 2010 (www.agile2010.org). When released, the Tasktop Agile Planner will support in-IDE planning for Tasktop Certified ALM solutions, such as IBM Rational Team Concert, Atlassian JIRA, CollabNet's ScrumWorks, Rally, ThoughtWorks Studios' Mingle and VersionOne.

About Tasktop Technologies

Tasktop Technologies is the company behind the Eclipse Mylyn ALM integration framework and its revolutionary task-focused interface technology. The task-focused interface is proven to make developers more productive by showing only the relevant information for each task, dramatically reducing search time and facilitating multitasking. Tasktop Pro is the company's enterprise-ready product based on Mylyn, with task-focused support for web browsing, time tracking, documents, email and calendars. Tasktop Technologies also provides consulting, connector development services and training to the growing number of companies adopting the task-focused paradigm and tools. For more information please visit www.tasktop.com.

SOURCE Tasktop Technologies