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Telerik TeamPulse Updated
Telerik this week released the Q3 2010 update of its TeamPulse Agile project management suite. Initially released in August 2010 to help Agile dev teams better manage the flow and management of project information, the Q3 version of TeamPulse adds key improvements to the suite.
Perhaps most important is the addition of bi-directional synchronization with Team Foundation Server. The new capability allows developers and QA managers to directly integrate tracking of requirements, progress and workflow. Information entered and tracked in TeamPulse is available in TFS and vice versa.
"The engineering shops that are using TFS will have the same context and flow as if it were built in TeamPulse," said Joel Semeniuk, executive vice president of Telerik Team Productivity Tools. "We needed a user experience that kind of modeled the way that people normally work when they do these jobs."
"There are a lot of challenges with TFS sync," he adds, noting that template-oriented schemas can change and that developers often change descriptions in their stories. "We really represent stories and related tasks really well in TFS."
Also new to this release of TeamPulse are UI enhancements and the ability to important data in Comma Separated Values (CSV) format. TeamPulse is built on Silverlight, the company said, in part to take advantage of the technology's richness and relatively broad reach.
Semeniuk said TeamPulse can quickly help dev shops streamline inefficient processes and capture critical project information and context. "Our first release really targeted the decomposition stories and capturing those stories and allowing people to collaborate around those stories," Semeniuk explained.
Telerik has plans for the next releases of TeamPulse in 2011, including a cloud-enabled version of the product, as well as features such as automated code analysis and change management support.
"We're going to be looking to kind of lower the bar to entry," said Semeniuk. "So we are looking at a cloud version of the product. We are also going to be lowering the bar of entry for people who aren't familiar to Agile. What we would like to do is build in some additional practices to help teams to really embrace some things maybe they are not familiar with off the bat."
The 2011 Q1 iteration of TeamPulse is expected to add integration with Telerik's WebUI Test Studio product, Semeniuk said.
TeamPulse is priced at $249 per user for a perpetual license, with available bulk discounts. Renewal fee terms are also available.
About the Author
Michael Desmond is an editor and writer for 1105 Media's Enterprise Computing Group.