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.