While adopting Agile processes for their state-wide development teams at Minnesota State Colleges & Universities (MNSCU), the Enterprise Software Development division sought to develop more mature Agile processes among their teams, and to find a tool that would facilitate those Agile ideas in a distributed team culture. By using Mingle, they can customize the tool to mirror and support their development, collaboration and reporting needs. They also now deliver software products that are more timely and well tested and better meet the needs of their customers, the students and staff at MNSCU.

1. CASE STUDY
mingle
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MINNESOTA STATE COLLEGES Embrace Change.
Agile Project Management & UNIVERSITIES MNSCU Deliver Certainty.
Mingle Bene ts Taking Higher Education to New Heights
MNSCU Enterprise Software IT Team Collaborates
Flexibility To Improve Product Quality in Education Software
Because the development team uses
Mingle for their sprint planning and daily Executive Summary—While adopting Agile processes for their state-wide
stand-up meetings, the team is more development teams at Minnesota State Colleges & Universities (MNSCU), the
nimble and can more easily Enterprise Software Development division sought to develop more mature
accommodate to change, including
bringing in ad hoc resources to complete
Agile processes among their teams, and to nd a tool that would facilitate
speci c tasks. Mingle also helps the team those Agile ideas in a distributed team culture. By using Mingle, they can
evolve and de ne its organizational customize the tool to mirror and support their development, collaboration and
processes over time. reporting needs. They also now deliver software products that are more timely
and well tested and better meet the needs of their customers, the students and
Visibility sta at MNSCU.
By using Mingle, the team succeeded in
providing real-time visibility into the
development process to all participants,
which helped to e ectively communicate The Customer
project status and proactively manage The MNSCU Enterprise Software Development division provides software
change. applications for 32 educational institutions, including 25 two-year colleges and
seven state universities, reaching nearly 400,000 students and employees. The
division has developed and maintains numerous enterprise systems including
Collaboration human resources, online student application and class registration, online
Mingle’s shared workspace allows the curriculum delivery, accounting and nance, student housing and nancial aid. A
entire team to share all project artifacts division of the O ce of the Chancellor and based in St. Paul, MN, the Enterprise IT
and avoid losing valuable information, division has 152 employees in seven o ces state-wide, including ve application
such as lost discussions in email chains. development teams, one QA team, and three teams of support analysts.
With Mingle’s centralized repository, the
project’s backlog, key user stories,
acceptance criteria, and task status
updates are all in one place and are easily
The Challenge
In 2007, several of MNSCU’s Enterprise Software Development teams began to
accessible by all team members.
implement Agile “ideas” and processes. The Web Applications Development team
in Minneapolis (WADM), which is responsible for HR applications, started to use
Scrum and was searching for an Agile management and collaboration tool to
For more information about Mingle automate release and sprint planning and to better manage overall product
or to request a demo, please delivery e ort.
contact:
Prior to using Mingle, the team worked with Microsoft® Project, Word and Excel for
EMAIL: studios@thoughtworks.com day-to-day project management and task organization. The team created and
tracked stories, tasks, and dependencies in Microsoft® O ce documents and
CALL: stored them as shared les on the network. This manual process required constant
+1-312-543-2599 | North America attention to carefully track and communicate changes to requirements, status,
stories, and plans.
+91-80-4064-9703 | Rest of the world
Copyright c 2009 ThoughtWorks, Inc. All rights reserved. www.thoughtworks-studios.com

2. CASE STUDY
This labor-intensive project management process led to ine cient
collaboration between local and distributed team members and Mingle has helped us perform sprint planning, manage the
with management sta . The team wanted an online project
management tool that would truly allow them to collaborate and daily tasks of development and testing, and track our velocity
adapt to change using Agile Scrum guidelines, and was exible which feeds back into good planning. Mingle has raised
enough to meet the needs of their distributed work environment. visibility of all aspects of our development process, and has
helped us become more open and collaborative.
The Solution
The WADM team had three objectives when they started working --Dick McMullen, ITS Supervisor
with Mingle: 1) develop the next version of their J2EE enterprise
human resources system; 2) further develop and promote the Minnesota State Colleges & Universities
adoption of Agile processes among their team; 3) and use Mingle
as much as possible during the software development process
within a speci c release schedule.
Sta in distributed locations participate in these sessions using
Six months later, Mingle drives the software development e ort for online conferencing and are fully engaged in the planning and
the WADM team. Product requirements are gathered by the estimating discussions. All WADM team members leave the
business analyst and put into Mingle as user stories, including planning session with a consistent understanding of the current
priorities and acceptance criteria. The development team meets sprint, including story assignments.
every two weeks for a sprint planning session to review stories and
tasks, and to discuss and clarify requirements and acceptance The team also works with Mingle on a continual basis to track the
criteria. status of their work, which provides real-time visibility to all team
members and stakeholders. This includes using Mingle for daily
The team determines the relative e ort and size of each task using stand-up meetings and moving cards across swim lanes as
the “planning poker” estimation technique. During this planning activities are completed during the development process. The
session, a Mingle card wall is projected within the meeting room WADM team enjoys the visual experience of tracking the status of
so the entire team can openly interact and participate as a single their work and receiving acknowledgment of their
group. Changes are made in real time, as stories are added, accomplishments during these meetings.
changed, or broken down into tasks.
This chart within Mingle shows the progression
of stories through the development work ow
process for the WADM team during a current
sprint. By having easy access to this real-time
information, the WADM team can make
informed business decisions that move the
project closer to a successful release.
Copyright c 2009 ThoughtWorks, Inc. All rights reserved. www.thoughtworks-studios.com

3. CASE STUDY
The card wall feature in Mingle serves as
the focal point for the WADM team, and
this view shows the card wall for one of
the team’s sprints. During team planning
sessions, the Mingle card wall is projected
in the room, allowing everyone to interact
and participate as a group. The card wall
also is used during daily stand-up meetings
to visually track the work progression of the
team.
With Mingle, the WADM team now has the exibility to self
organize on a daily basis as needed. The team can quickly Mingle’s strengths are its visual presentation, its exibility, and
recon gure to meet changing requirements, pulling in ad hoc
its accessibility for all members of a distributed team. We use
resources to keep the project moving forward. Managers have
real-time visibility into exactly what the team is working on, as well Mingle’s visual presentation to facilitate our day-to-day project
as overall project progress. This level of visibility allows them to management tasks, and we tailor Mingle’s worklow
more quickly manage problems and additional requests. In the
future, executive management also may have this visibility. to match our Agile Scrum development life cycle. Mingle has
delivered what we expected and more to our development
The Results team.
The WADM team has successfully integrated Mingle into an Agile
Scrum culture and enjoys using the product on a daily basis. With --Dick McMullen, ITS Supervisor
Mingle, the team has found a tool that helps to improve Agile Minnesota State Colleges & Universities
collaboration, planning and status reporting. The entire team now
has a better understanding of project requirements, status and
cooperative tasks, which has resulted in the team developing a
software product that better meets the customer’s expectations. The Future
The WADM team plans to expand their Mingle implementation to
By using Mingle to facilitate Agile approaches, the team has additional development teams and locations and to re ne their
captured missed requirements and bugs while still in Mingle customization. Through demonstrations, cross-functional
development, rather than after being released. By reducing the team collaboration and mentoring, the WADM team intends to
rework cycle often associated with bugs discovered after a release, aid other development teams in piloting Mingle while they adopt
the team has decreased the overall cost of delivery. and mature Agile practices. The department also will continue to
provide valuable feedback to ThoughtWorks Studios about
And lastly, by utilizing Mingle’s collaboration features, which allows ongoing Mingle product development.
the team to work more e ciently with stakeholders on a regular
basis, the team has more easily and fully adopted Agile processes.
The WADM team also has been using Mingle to demonstrate Agile
methods to computer science students at campuses where
MNSCU IT services are located. Mingle has provided a visual,
real-life example of Agile principles, and these demonstrations
have helped students become more interested in learning Agile
methods and working in Agile development environments.
Copyright c 2009 ThoughtWorks, Inc. All rights reserved. www.thoughtworks-studios.com

4. CASE STUDY
About ThoughtWorks Studios
ThoughtWorks Studios is a global leader in Agile software development tools, and its products can be found in development
organizations seeking sustainable Agile adoption. The company’s Adaptive Application Lifecycle Management (ALM)
solution provides a platform for managing all aspects of software development, from requirements de nition and project
TM
management to test automation, quality assurance, and release management. Adaptive ALM consists of the integration of
three products: Mingle (project management), Twist (test automation) and Cruise (release management). Each tool is
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available as part of a complete lifecycle solution or as a stand-alone product. Backed by more than 16 years of experience in
Agile delivery, ThoughtWorks Studios is the product division of the ThoughtWorks, Inc., the pioneering leader in Agile
development. ThoughtWorks Studios has 200 customers in more than 20 countries, including 3M, Honeywell, BBC, eBay,
Barclays, Vodafone, McGraw-Hill and Rackspace. The company headquarters is co-located in San Francisco and Bangalore,
with o ces in London and select cities in Europe, Asia and Australia.
For more information, visit www.thoughtworks-studios.com
mingle Mingle, an Agile management and collaboration tool,
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provides a common workspace for all team members and an
automated system of record for all projects. Mingle can adapt
any existing work ow process and easily manages daily
Agile Project Management development activities. O ering true-to-life visibility into the
entire development process for all stakeholders, Mingle helps
development teams become more open and collaborative.
twist
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Twist, an automated testing solution, provides English-like
constructs, making the testing process more productive for
all team members. As applications grow in complexity, Twist
helps to more easily maintain complex test suites. These
Test Automation suites keep pace with application development and are held
as long-living assets.
cruise
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Cruise provides both continuous integration and release
management and can drive development and IT operations to
collectively plan continuous product releases. Cruise o ers
deployment pipelines and a zero-con guration build grid,
Release Management
which simplify the release management process. Unlike open-
source tools, Cruise scales to meet the needs of a complex
development project with numerous dependencies.
Copyright c 2009 ThoughtWorks, Inc. All rights reserved. www.thoughtworks-studios.com