--- title: "Can Agile project management software succeed?" url: "https://osherove.com/blog/2004/11/27/can-agile-project-management-software-succeed.md" canonical: "https://osherove.com/blog/2004/11/27/can-agile-project-management-software-succeed.html" published: "2004-11-27T23:06:00" updated: "2004-11-27T23:06:00" tags: ["Agile Related"] author: "Roy Osherove" description: "TargetProcess: Planning is a web project management software aimed at agile project management. It's also free to download (built for asp.net). It looks pretty cool and seems to contain most of the features needed for…" usage: "Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page)." license: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" --- # Can Agile project management software succeed? By Roy Osherove November 27, 2004 In [Agile Related](https://osherove.com/blog/category/agile-related) **Historical article** · Originally published November 27, 2004; technical details may be outdated. [TargetProcess: Planning](http://www.targetprocess.com/) is a web project management software aimed at agile project management. It's also free to download (built for asp.net). It looks pretty cool and seems to contain most of the features needed for an XP project to be managed.  There's also a nice [Agile-minded blog on the site](http://blog.targetprocess.com/). However, one thing always worries me: XP supports the notion of "Use the most basic and simple tools to manage and get feedback". You know, stuff like white boards, paper, cards. Perhaps, in a sense, managing it using software, be it agile-minded and all, arn't you still denying the whole notion of ease and simplicity? software itself makes the whole process more complex and harder to track. Will this software produce the daily meeting output on a white board? No. Will it produce a project plan on a wall with cards? no. You still need to do that _plus manage_ the whole process on your software. Be it MS project or something specifically designed for agile projects - arn't you slowing yourself down and bogging your project with unnecessary complexity? COuldn't you do just fine without it? The answer I would guess depends on the project. for me, filling out user stories from cards into my computer already sort of defies the whole idea of being able to tear it easily and redo it from scratch. You'd have to essentially do it twice -once physically and once with the mouse. The more I think about it the more I think it Will be hard to adopt such a thing. Think about it, you're essentially saying "Manage the new way of doing things using the old way of managing things", arn't you? ## More in Agile Related [All posts in Agile Related](https://osherove.com/blog/category/agile-related) - Nov 29, 2004 ### [Test Driven Development workshop news and coming attractions](https://osherove.com/blog/2004/11/29/test-driven-development-workshop-news-and-coming-attractions.html) - Nov 29, 2004 ### [TestDriven.Net version 1.0 is out (with a new site design as well)](https://osherove.com/blog/2004/11/29/testdrivennet-version-10-is-out-with-a-new-site-design-as-we.html) - Nov 24, 2004 ### [Not Invented here](https://osherove.com/blog/2004/11/24/not-invented-here.html) - Nov 12, 2004 ### [Article: Continuous Database Integration by Peter Hancock](https://osherove.com/blog/2004/11/12/article-continuous-database-integration-by-peter-hancock.html) --- ## About the author **Roy Osherove**: Senior Solutions Architect at AWS working on AI for production and AI-driven development; author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership, with about 20 years of consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery. ### Sites - [RobotPaper](https://robotpaper.ai/): This blog: AI patterns and anti-patterns, AI and coding agents, and engineering leadership. - [osherove.com](https://osherove.com): Roy's personal site. Author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership; consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery, plus about 20 years of blog posts. - [The Art of Unit Testing](https://www.artofunittesting.com): The Art of Unit Testing, 3rd Edition (Manning): readable, maintainable, trustworthy unit tests, plus TDD workshops in C#, JavaScript, Java and Kotlin. - [5whys.com](https://www.5whys.com): Roy's writing on software team leadership: self-organizing teams, surviving chaos, learning mode and the Elastic Leadership model. - [Pipeline Driven](https://pipelinedriven.org): Continuous delivery and DevOps practices: build patterns, pipeline-friendly testing, DevOps metrics and enterprise DevOps. - [Elastic Leadership](https://www.elasticleadership.com): Elastic Leadership, Roy's framework for software team leaders (survival, learning and self-organizing modes). ### Social - X: https://x.com/royosherove - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/osherove/ ### Contact - Contact form: https://forms.gle/jQSx5KoXvrVA1JCK7 ### License Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page). License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/