AccuRev Uses Rally and Anthill Pro in New Tool Suite

AccuRev Uses Rally and Anthill Pro in New Tool Suite

As agile is adopted by more development shops, the demand for integrated tools that cover the whole application development lifecycle is increasing.  Some agile tool vendors try to create the entire suite by themselves, like IBM.  Others will try to bring together popular, battle-tested tools from several different sources and combine them into one offering.  That's what AccuRev has done.  They recently announced their new offering, AgileCycle, which combines Rally Software and Urbancode's Anthill Pro with AccuRev SCM software.

At its core, AgileCycle uses AccuRev Enterprise edition, which includes software configuration management and AccuWork's defect and issue tracking with workflow.  Rally's Enterprise project management software is included in the package along with Urbancode’s AnthillPro.  Rally takes care of story requirements for agile development, while Anthill Pro handles continuous integration along with build and release management.  One area that AccuRev wanted to keep agnostic was testing.  AgileCycle has a plugin architecture to integrate a customer's preferred third-party testing tools.

Rally Enterprise Edition

AgileCycle is also agnostic in the languages and agile methodologies that it uses.  Each tool in the suite is language-independent and it lets developers work on short iterations and make changes to those iterations midway.   AccuRev, with the AgileCycle tools, has a lot of flexibility built around process models. 

Anthill Pro Dashboard

AccuRev intends to compete with other ALM vendors like IBM, Microsoft, and Serena, who also have all-inclusive agile development tool suites.  VersionOne also has a full ALM suite which has integrated some of it's capabilities with AccuRev's AccuBridge.  AccuRev has a good chance to be profitable with the expanding adoption of agile methodologies.  Forrester Research says that over a third of development shops currently use agile.  By 2012, Gartner predicts that agile development methodologies will be used by 80% percent of all software development projects.

AgileCycle is now available in a free trial. The perpetual license, which comes with a year of support and maintenance included, is $2,695.