Selecting the right tool


A good starting point for the tool discussion is that the tool is "only a tool". You need to have competent people to use the tool(s). Another thing to remember in this tool decision is that when talking about agile, scrum, kanban or even pure waterfall these all tend to cover just the core layers of the work. There is a lot more in making a project successful. I mainly touch that area in the Change management topic.

How do you know which tools to apply. Well, I don't have an exact matrix how the tool evaluation is done, but
Clear target vs unclear target
Clear target and scope makes it easier to pick waterfall approach... but keeping in mind the good agile practices - keeping customer closely involved, regular short improvement cycle and working on the plan details as you move on.

• Experience vs. inexperience
• Have we done this before?
• Small change vs. big change
• Realistic schedule vs. unrealistic schedule

In a real work there are situation that you just have to live with the unrealistic schedules
I would pick up an iterative approach to reduce the risk not delivering anything