Sciforma Announces Industry’s First Seamless Agile-Waterfall Integration

London (Gartner PPM Summit, June 12, 2017). Sciforma, a leading provider of easy-to-use Enterprise Portfolio and Project Management (PPM) software for large and mid-size companies today announced a major new update to the Sciforma Agile Extension during the Gartner Program & Portfolio Management Summit 2017. The newly enhanced extension is the first in the industry to seamlessly integrate and synchronize Agile and Waterfall methodologies not only within a project but within the entire system. Thus, the Agile-Waterfall integration gives Agile users an even more flexible and powerful tool. At the same time, it transparently incorporates all the key project data to and from linear-style tools often favored by Project and Portfolio Managers.

Agile methodologies are immensely popular, especially with software development teams, who appreciate its emphasis on agility, speed and the ability to manage uncertainty. However, portfolio and other managers typically use linear methodologies like Waterfall, Phase-Gate, CCPM, and Prince2. These traditional methodologies put the emphasis on predictability, accuracy, reliability, and stability. Because Agile and Waterfall differ in their vocabularies and reporting pace, project leaders can find it difficult to keep them in sync. The newly enhanced version of the Sciforma PPM Integrated Agile Management extension solves that challenge, seamlessly integrating the different methodologies.

“Sciforma is the first in the industry with fully integrated Agile and traditional linear approaches in a single PPM solution right out of the box,” says Fabien Herelle, Sciforma VP of Solutions. “We believe this Agile-Waterfall integration will enable businesses to cost-effectively embrace agility while still giving project managers and executives the ability to analyze investments, plan capacity, manage risks, and better control expenses.”

Sciforma and Agile

Since its Agile extension was first introduced in 2012, project teams working for Sciforma customers have enthusiastically embraced it. That said, managers in other groups using linear project management solutions told Sciforma they needed an easier way to monitor and allocate resources, track performance, handle timesheets and roll up costs from Agile teams. With this new version of the Sciforma Agile extension, significant enhancements enable key data to be shared seamlessly both upstream and downstream between teams using Agile and managers using linear approaches like Waterfall.

The Agile Extension makes it very easy for the Project Managers to update their plans to reflect the dates, progress, and effort involved in the phases that are managed with Agile. Furthermore, from their usual views (such as the Gantt view), they can quickly access details of an iteration or release, and review task boards and backlogs to stay on top of expected deliverables.

Sciforma PPM Integrated Agile Management is available immediately.