An “Almogavar” was a class of soldier from many Christian Iberian kingdoms in the later phases of the Reconquista, during the 13th and 14th centuries. Almogavars were lightly clad, quick-moving frontiersmen and foot-soldiers. They hailed from the Kingdom of Aragon, the Principality of Catalonia, the Kingdom of Valencia, the Crown of Castile and the Kingdom of Portugal. At first these troops were formed by farmers and shepherds originating from the countryside, woods and frontier mountain areas. Later, they were employed as mercenaries in Italy, Latin Greece and the Levant. Almogavar is an application that helps the Agile project manager track a project’s progress to its budget and generate forecasts and calculate percentage complete. It interfaces with various Microsoft Office 2013 applications like Word, Excel and Project. Utilizing the core Condotiero functionality and database, Castellan Systems’ proven Project Management suite, Almogavar makes use to essential Condotiero functionality, while adding new functionality to support projects utilizing Scrum or other Agile product development models or approaches. While there are other project management tools available in the market, they tend to focus on project planning & scheduling, task management and reporting. Almogavar covers all those facets of project management and more to support not only the project manager but also the rest of the team during the project execution. Besides project planning & scheduling, task management and reporting, Almogavar supports the Project Manager and the Project Team to perform such tasks as estimating, scheduling, epics & user stories definitions, risk analysis & management, decisions, action, defect and issue tracking, document control, status reporting, calculating cost to complete and tracking & monitoring status against the plan. While other packages out there highlight they cloud-based solutions, at Castellan Systems we believe that project data can be sensitive and should be protected. We've worked for many government agencies which require extra levels of security. Maintaining their projects' data within their vendors' firewall is a very important requirement for such agencies. Almogavar has been designed by a project manager while working as a project manager. Every facet of Almogavar has been tested while performing those tasks in many projects. It has been refined as lessons have been learnt in actual use of the package. We actually use it internally to manage all of our projects. If we find that there is something else we need to do in a project, it finds its way into a new release. You partner Almogavar with ClockKeeper, our timesheeting system (read more) and you have an unbeatable combination. Note: Almogavar, as it has been built on top of the Condotiero core functionality, it's able to utilise the optional Condotiero add-ons that can be purchased separately which add functionality to the core system. Please see the add-ons and Artificer pages. So what does Almogavar do? |
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Almogavar has been built on our next generation application from ProMan. It's an application that can be used as an enterprise PM tool or by individual Project Managers or consultants to better manage their projects. Besides having the core functionality of Condotiero, it incorporates far more functionality to better support the Project Manager's efforts in an Agile environment. It can be used by the whole team, not just the Project Manager, and it can function as a dashboard for management to gauge the performance of the overall project portfolio. |
Almogavar allows you to record the project labour and expenses estimates. It also calculates revenue estimates based on the labour
and estimates. |
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Almogavar can be used for minor projects (or tasks), large project or very large projects (or programmes) which are broken into several
sub-projects. |
In Agile, Personas are a powerful technique for defining users and customer of a product in order to make the right product decisions.
This is necessary in order to build a connection with the beneficiaries of the product, develop empathy and understand their current wants,
needs and circumstances. Keep your personas concise; don’t bloat them and don’t add irrelevant details. While your personas have to enough
information to be useful, too much detail makes them difficult to work with. Relevant information of the personas of the persona can be recorded,
including a picture. |
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Agile teams typically differentiate between "epics" and "user stories". In most cases epics are just really large stories that sit far down on your product
backlog until the team is ready to flesh them out into more detail. The logical question is how to scope an epic and then break it up into user stories as
an agile business analyst. |
User Stories are simple narratives; a series of related and interdependent stories makes up an epic. They are supporting artefacts for requirements. User stories
are not expected to be a full and complete set of requirements. They are an anchor for a conversation. As a person who is creating and delivering requirements to
a development team you may have further details written down, models created and rules listed. These are also useful and should be, like User Stories, used as supporting
tools in a conversation with your developers. |
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Almogavar supports the execution of a risk review/analysis workshop. |
Almogavar defines the tasks and expenses that will be required to develop the requirements of the user stories defined. |
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Almogavar can define sprints and include user stories, their tasks and expenses in their scope. |
Condotiero can generate project schedules in 2 ways.
It provides a built-in scheduling facility to create Gantt charts, and therefore project schedules. This facility can:
But it can also interface with Ms Project to allow the user to:
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Almogavar records the product components built or modified during the sprint to deliver the final product, along with their type. |
Almogavar records unit test plan details. |
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Almogavar prepares and tracks forecasts to complete. |
Almogavar maintains a Product Backlog board which can be viewed to review progress.
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Almogavar allows you to record project variations and generates and prints Change Control Forms which can then be used to obtain
approvals for the variation budget. |
Almogavar generates a project S-curve and other financial based graphs. |
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Almogavar records & tracks Risks; it assists generating risk action plans. |
Almogavar generates document identities and tracks details of documents. |
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There are 4 types of Quality processes/reviews that Almogavar tracks. Those processes are:
Almogavar will track project progress and highlight when they are due. |
Almogavar supports 4 different types of sprint retrospective:
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Almogavar supports a Retrospect Project Meeting, which is normally held at the end of the project. The Retrospect Project Meeting is a meeting to determine ways in which team collaboration and effectiveness can be improved in future projects. Positives, negatives, and potential opportunities for improvement are also discussed. This meeting is not Time-boxed and may be conducted in person or in a virtual format. Attendees include the Project Team, Chief Scrum Master, Chief Product Owner, and Stakeholder(s). During the meeting, lessons learned are documented and participants look for opportunities to improve processes and address inefficiencies. |
Almogavar can also:
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Almogavar records component inventory details. |
Almogavar provides team members with a list and schedule of the tasks they’ve been assigned across all projects they are working on. It will display a list of open tasks assigned to any team member; this list can be viewed as either just the current active tasks or all assigned tasks. The list can also be printed. It will display a schedule of open tasks assigned to any team member. The schedule can also be printed. |
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Almogavar provides inbuilt Emailing facilities. Emails can be imported from your Email Server without the need for an Email client like Microsoft Outlook. These Emails can be linked to current open projects, portfolios or programmes (depending on the application) which are then stored within the database along with al of the project data and documents loaded.
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Almogavar can also send Emails through your Email Server without the need for an Email client like Microsoft Outlook. These Emails can be also be linked to current open projects, portfolios or programmes (depending on the application) which are then stored within the database along with all of the project data and documents loaded. |
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Messenger now features a more graphical interface. We even provide the Messenger as a standalone tool that team members that don't regularly used them, you can load this standalone tool at startup and maintain contact with your teammates. |
As well as all of these tasks, Almogavar assists the Project Manager in other ways. Please check it out; it's available for download on a 30-day trial. Almogavar is available in 5, 10 and 50 user licenses; but we're happy to negotiate any other arrangement. Just contact us. |