In 2014, Forrester released an article that stated: “CX leaders must drive new levels of responsiveness and creativity into their ecosystems. And the way you drive these attributes into your ecosystems is to seize on the concept of business agility.”
Since then, slimming down enterprise systems and processes has become a significant CX trend, as companies strive to gain quick insights and innovate faster.
In line with this, enterprise agile planning (EAP) tools have come to the fore, combining multiple data sources to enable enterprise agile frameworks, strategy management, and much more.
Assessing the solutions and services of 17 prominent providers, Gartner isolates six market leaders.
Defining Enterprise Agile Planning Tools
Gartner defines enterprise agile planning tools as: “Products that enable organizations to scale their agile practices to support a holistic enterprise view.”
Indeed, they provide the necessary software and integrations for the definition, planning, and management of critical business processes.
Many regard them as the next generation of project-/team-centric tools that support an outcome-driven strategy to manage large-scale, agile product delivery initiatives.
The solutions are steadily becoming mainstream as businesses coordinate enterprise-wide projects and streamline governance and leadership processes.
In doing so, they simplify processes such as:
- Product road mapping
- Strategy, investment, and objective management
- Gaining visibility into the flow of work
- Backlog management
- Cross-function process management
When evaluating the offerings of 17 tools that meet this definition, Gartner divided each provider into four categories: Leaders, Challengers, Visionaries, and Niche Players. Here, we review them all.
Leaders
Leaders in the magic quadrant demonstrate a strong vision for the future, combining thought leadership with developer collaboration and DevOps. They also boast a healthy market presence and a proven track record of successful large-scale deployments. Finally, have an extensive partner network and a selection of convenient integrations, alongside expert training and implementation services. This year’s leaders are:
- Digital.ai
- Planview
- Atlassian
- Broadcom
- Apptio
- ServiceNow
Digital.ai
Digital.ai supports numerous enterprise agile frameworks, including SAFe, LeSS, and DAD, while also pushing its machine learning capabilities further. An excellent example of this is how the vendor is enhancing its value stream delivery and management platforms. Such innovation will also provide next-level analytics capabilities, which Gartner praises the provider for, alongside its market understanding and status within the space.
Planview
After a series of acquisitions and alliances in 2021, Planview has invested heavily in outcome road mapping, agile program planning, and machine learning insights. One particular alliance is its Tasktop partnership, which led to the development of Planview Labs, a process and work visualization tool. Gartner applauds such outcomes of the partnership, alongside its hybrid portfolio management capabilities and enhanced “agile expertise”.
Atlassian
Atlassian provides a comprehensive solution with embedded support for enterprise agile frameworks. Following its acquisition of Chartio last year, the provider has added enhanced analytics capabilities to the solution, underlining its shrewd product strategy that Gartner lauds. In addition, the market analyst offered special recognition for its “open toolchain concept” that supports companies in dealing with the challenges created by fragmented DevOps tools.
Broadcom
Broadcom boasts two leading EAP solutions: Rally and Clarity. Thanks to a simple integration, these tools work side-by-side to provide an enterprise-scale solution supported by an extensive selection of planning and management features. In tandem, the tools offer next-level support for the SAFe agile framework that garners praise within the magic quadrant report. Similar acclaim is given to the market strategy and global partnerships established by the Broadcom team.
Apptio
Offering its Targetprocess EAP solution across private, public, and vendor-hosted clouds, Apptio enables remote workers to collaborate in new, quick ways that increase agility. Thanks to its cloud foundation, Targetprocess enables companies to implement agile scaling frameworks more easily. Gartner recognizes this, alongside its financial management capabilities and sales generation, with double-digit year-over-year growth in customer acquisition.
ServiceNow
Known primarily for its CRM system, ServiceNow also offers an EAP suite called “IT Business Management (ITBM) platform”. It allows users to manage outcomes to achieve value, adapt planning for uncertainty, and scale work faster, thanks to an extensive platform ecosystem, which Gartner highlights as a critical strength. The market analyst recognizes this, alongside its broad support network and viability as a rapidly evolving vendor.
Challengers
Challengers in the magic quadrant benefit from a significant market reach and a reputation for delivering the right results for focused use cases. Such a reputation drives high sales rates and emboldens its brand presence. Yet, they seem to have less of an influence on the direction of the EAP market, falling behind leaders in their completeness of vision. This year’s challengers are:
- Siemens
- GitLab
- Planisware
- IBM
Siemens
Revered for its cyber-physical systems, Siemens receives praise from Garter for how it “bridges the gap between tools used for physical product life cycles and software delivery toolchains.” In addition to this cyber-physical focus, the market analyst isolates how Siemens supports companies to reduce complexity as a significant strength. However, Siemens may fall behind competitors in offering an “antiquated” UI that often prevents businesses from taking full advantage of platform features.
GitLab
GitLab provides clients with a transparent pricing model and streamlined onboarding process, enabling users to quickly get to grips with the end-to-end visibility of their software development value stream. Such value delivery is a central component of its EAP strategy, as well as its extensive partner program. Yet, Gartner cautions that GitLab does not fully support a widescale financial management portfolio and particular enterprise agile frameworks, including SAFe.
Planisware
Rapidly expanding into the Americas and the Asia/Pacific region, Planisware achieves high customer retention rates, perhaps due to its emphasis on project and portfolio management. As a result, it has become well-established within the EAP market. Gartner notes this as a significant strength yet cautions potential clients about the lack of industry-specific solutions currently available within its Planisware Enterprise and Planisware Orchestra solutions.
IBM
Perhaps the most recognizable player within the EAP space, IBM offers clients the luxury of an expansive support network thanks to IBM consulting team. There is also an array of tools that covers the entire product development life cycle that sits inside its EAP platforms: Engineering Workflow Management and UrbanCode Velocity. Nevertheless, Gartner warns that these solutions are perhaps a little too complex for those in less regulated industries that value simplicity above all else.
Visionaries
Visionaries in the magic quadrant offer an ambitious roadmap for the future, which attracts a forward-thinking customer base. However, they fall behind leaders in their ability to execute, often suffering from growing pains. Typically, smaller companies than leaders and challengers, these providers are frequently acquired by larger outfits that wish to take advantage of their innovation. This year’s visionaries are:
- There are no visionaries in this year’s magic quadrant.
Niche Players
Niche players in the magic quadrant often drive business success across specific uses. Yet, their portfolios often lack strength in depth when compared to competitors. Also, they lack the vision, partnerships, and global presence to shake up the industry, despite demonstrating the functionalities to meet the needs of many enterprises. This year’s niche players are:
- Digité
- Inflectra
- Micro Focus
- TCS
- Favro
- Enalean
- Bee360
Digité
Digité is a prominent EAP player in Asia/Pacific, developing robust AI and machine learning capabilities integrated into its UI. These enable enhanced natural language search and navigation. Gartner pinpoints this strength alongside its Lean and Kanban capabilities. However, the magic quadrant report reveals that some customers endured a long and complex implementation process, despite a primarily positive end result.
Inflectra
Developing separate EAP tools for small businesses and large-scale enterprises, Inflectra focuses on delivering out-of-the-box solutions that hinge on a simple UI, onboarding experience, and implementation process. Such innovations are a luxury in the regulated industries that Inflectra targets, which perhaps highlights why it is enjoying a speedy expansion. However, this “niche appeal” concerns Gartner, as the analyst recommends that the vendor broadens its portfolio.
Micro Focus
Working with a whole host of global brands, Micro Focus supports them to ensure regulatory compliance and quality management traceability. In doing so, they offer hybrid support to accelerate application delivery, strengthen cyber resilience, and enhance data analysis. Unfortunately, Gartner highlights the vendor was slow to react to emerging market trends and develop a forward-thinking vision and product strategy.
TCS
Through its Jile Marketplace, TCS offers many third-party integrations alongside complementary plug-ins and tools, enabling deep customization. Its TCS MasterCraft DevPlus solution supports multimodal deliveries and comes with a well-structured training and certification program. Yet, it does not include CAPEX-OPEX tracking, despite its lean portfolio management features and reports.
Favro
Favro aims to deliver “a truly mobile experience to the digital workplace,” according to the magic quadrant report. Its advanced UI, customer support, and third-party integrations make this possible. Unfortunately, it is yet to gain traction with its “bottom-up sales strategy” and has not achieved the same investment as its competitors.
Enalean
With its unrelenting focus on cyber-physical systems, compliance, and traceability, Enalean provides a competitively priced proposition. It is also highly product-orientated, facilitating agile business planning. Yet, perhaps this philosophy has inhibited its ability to secure third-party integrations that enable a more comprehensive software development value stream. Such a lack of partner networks may also contribute to its low market visibility.
Bee360
Previously known as Clausmark, Bee360 works with many clients across the manufacturing, finance, and energy sectors. They also strive to enhance the process and product management capabilities of clients while building integrations with DevOps toolchains. However, successful implementation hinges heavily on consulting services, which may become an overhead.
Looking Ahead to 2023
Enterprises are at vastly different stages of the business transformation process, as they adopt agile, DevOps, and value stream practices at varying rates.
However, as the technology, regulations, and cultures evolve, companies will grow into these tools, perhaps turning to more than one solution to adopt an increasing number of agile practices.
These solutions may belong to other vendors not included within the magic quadrant, including Microsoft, which offers two independent EAP tools: Azure Boards and GitHub Enterprise.
In 2023, hopefully, the leading will feature in the report alongside other stalwart vendors as the EAP space continues to expand.
Delve deeper into the 2022 Gartner Magic Quadrant series by reading our rundown of the:
- Gartner Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Conversational AI Platforms 2022
- Gartner Magic Quadrant for Data and Analytics Service Providers 2022
- Gartner Magic Quadrant for Digital Experience Platforms 2022
