Agile Workflows and Plugins

It has been a while, so thanks for your patience. We found out that many of you are Agile software developers and today we are launching a new feature just for you. We have integrated the Agilo plugin into Trac and it is now available in every Repository Hosting account. We have also added a few additional plugins to make using Repository Hosting friendlier.

Why Agile Software Development?

In 2001 a group of well-known software developers wrote the Agile Manifesto to protest the inefficient and unrealistic practices that were common in the almost ubiquitous waterfall model of software development. Agile methods recognize that projects are unpredictable and that there is often a disconnect between the developers and the customers. It focuses on people and working software over processes and planning. Software is developed iteratively, in short 1 to 2 week sprints, at the end of which the team delivers working software that can be shown to the customer for feedback. So why Agile software development? It forces you and your team to deliver working software in small increments, allowing you to skip a lot of the tedious and time-consuming project planning, instead adjusting your plan as you go.

There is nothing worse than spending 4 months developing an extremely complex piece of software (which you are very proud of), only to find out it wasn't exactly what the customer wanted. I know this firsthand, as I have had to throw away lots of code and have wasted many hours in the past, until I was introduced to the agile way of thinking.

For those of you who have never used agile methods, it's easy to start by using the Agilo plugin.

Agilo

Agilo is a Trac plugin developed by agile42 and is available on the new Plugins tab on your Project Settings page. It provides you with all the necessary tools for Agile programming, including defining teams, creating requirements, user stories, tasks, and bugs, a product backlog, sprint backlog, and burndown chart. Full documentation can be found here.

You will also notice that we've improved the theme and styles of Trac. These changes were inspired by the excellent theme that comes with Agilo.

Additional Plugins

In addition to Agilo, we have also added three other plugins for you to use. The Download Releases plugin provides you with a Downloads tab in Trac where you can post releases of your software for others to download. The Ticket Deletions plugin allows you to permanently delete tickets (as opposed to merely closing them). This is useful in case you get spam tickets added to your project. Finally, the Table of Contents macro allows you to create customized TOCs for your pages. Please check the Plugins tab for more details.

If you have any feedback on these new features, or if there is a Trac plugin you would like to see added, please send us a quick email and let us know at support@repositoryhosting.com. Remember, at Repository Hosting there is only One Plan, One Price no matter how many new features we add.

Enjoy your new agile tools!