update, Feb 18th, 2024 - since writing this post, I started developing www.merini.io, a tool that mixes the best of paper and physical scrum boards with the digital. I still practice a form of personal scrum, but I'm no longer using sticky notes or Trello, as mentioned in this blog post. I've been working on getting offline more often and for me, that also meant moving some of my favorite tools offline. I've been using www.trello.com as a SCRUM/Kanban board for a while and really enjoying the customizability of it's workflows, but every time I logged on, it required using the internet and invited distraction. I've been using the offline board for several weeks and I really love it. There's something about physically writing and moving the sticky notes that helps me mentally process them in a way that's more effective than typing. Brief Intro to SCRUM Agile and SCRUM processes have become really popular for managing software teams in the last decade or two and I've been adapting it to my own work style. I prefer it to a pure to-do list because it better reflects the psychology of how I do my work. There are easily googleable articles that go into more detail, but in short, the process is as follows. Make a list of everything to do. Make a sublist of what you'll do in the next given time period. (Usually between a full day and 6 weeks.) Do it. Don't work on anything that's not on your sublist. At the end of the given time period, evaluate how things went, and make a new sublist for the next time period. My Workflow For my personal workflow, I use more of a
Compare Kanban vs Scrum Agile project management methodologies. Learn when and why your team should use each.
Scrum Board Agile project management has made a name for itself as the most efficient way to tackle any business goal, especially when developing software. However, other companies have taken notice too. Now, a version of agile project management, scrum project management, is finding a home in businesses across every industry. At the heart of this technique is a compelling way to track a project's progress: a scrum board. Whether you design software, create marketing campaigns, or build homes, this simple tool can immediately make your team more efficient. Download This Template Now! Scrum Board What is a Scrum Board? A scrum board is used to track the progress of a sprint. A sprint is just a single work cycle inside of a larger project. It’s important for breaking down any project into more manageable parts, but those parts also need to be tracked and managed. We call these parts “stories.” Each story may be broken down further into different tasks. With scrum project management, each of these tasks must get addressed. This is where a scrum board comes in. An important point of note here is that there is a very similar organizational tool called a Kanban board. These are not the same, though. They look very similar, but they have different labels for their columns and take completely different perspectives on measuring the length of projects. Scrum Board Explained Building and following a proper Scrum board is step one in implementing a Scrum methodology. In general, it should consist of a few main columns: Column 1: Story This part of the Scrum board is where the separate stories of a project are identified and described. Some teams will fill this area with as many tasks as they can think of, while others may keep their scope within the projects able to be completed within a single sprint. Column 2: To Do The To-Do list is where the stories begin moving through the cycle of completion. Your team plans to complete the stories during the sprint are moved to this column before the sprint begins. Column 3: In Progress Whereas a Kanban board might limit how many stories are in this phase, a Scrum board shouldn’t have any constraints on how many parts of the project are handled at once. What matters is that the stories are completed at the end of the sprint. Column 4: To Verify This is the review stage of the Scrum board. A key stakeholder like the Product Owner checks to see that the story is completed to satisfaction and then moves it over to the final column. Column 5: Done In the final stage of a story, all aspects of the project that make it to this stage are wiped clean before moving on to newsprint. Those left behind are carried over. Using Scrum Boards in Daily Meetings The tracking and re-planning of the project are done every day during a 15-minute stand-up meeting. The head of the meeting is a facilitator called a “Scrum Master,” responsible for the administrative and management sides of the project. An essential component to add to your daily meetings will be reviewing the board and seeing if anyone has feedback on certain tasks or the story as a whole. In other words, don’t just use these meetings to assign out tasks or track progress. Take the opportunity to enlist feedback, as this will make your scrum project management efforts a lot more effective. As you can see, using a scrum board is easy, but the impact it can have is clear. If you’re tired of dealing with chaos when a project is launched, use this approach in your daily meetings to keep everyone on task. Scrum Board Daily Meeting How to Design a Scrum Board Agile project management thrives because of its simplicity, and the scrum board is no exception. To make one, you just need to create five columns: Story, To Do, In Progress, To Verify, and Done. You also start writing tasks and assignee names on post-it or task notes and sticking them in the relevant columns. In the above example, we’re going to pretend we have three stories in our project. Each of these stories may have any number of tasks assigned to them. Above, we’ve added some in for the sake of the example. Again, if you’re familiar with Kanban boards, this example should look very similar, but the column names are different and, in the scrum, we measure this project in terms of iteration. Kanban measures by workflow state. Now, at the beginning of a sprint, your team would want to look at this board. You could either assign the tasks out or, depending on how your company operates, people may come forward because they don’t have any work at the moment. There are several ways to make a scrum board. You could do the above on an excel sheet and share it with your workers. You could also create one on a whiteboard and use sticky notes for the tasks. Just summarize the task on the note and then add the person or team who has been assigned it. Scrum Board vs. Kanban Board: What’s the Difference? Essentially, both Scrum and Kanban describe two approaches to visualizing and documenting a project's flow from conceptualization to completion. They both focus on breaking down a larger, more complex issue into smaller, manageable aspects. Both also use the whiteboard method to show exactly which stage of development and completion each aspect (also called a “story”) is in at any given point. However, one of the main differences between these two methods is how they constrain each work. A Scrum methodology uses “sprints” as a way to limit the scope and keep production focused. These are short periods of time (usually a few weeks to a month) wherein as many stories are completed as possible. Team members estimate how many stories they can complete in each sprint, and all incomplete stories are transferred over to the next sprint. At the end of these sprints, the team gets together and discusses what was accomplished, what went wrong, and how they plan to change during the next sprint. With Kanban, the scope is limited by the number of stories being worked on at once rather than the time spent on them. Once these aspects are completed, more stories can be added to the To-Do section of the board and pushed through the cycle. Whereas Scrum prioritizes segmented iterations and near-constant communication among a cross-functional team, Kanban focuses on continuous delivery, increased productivity, and flexibility. Read in detail a comparison of Kanban vs Scrum vs Agile. Scrum Board Excel Template The example consists of three stories for implementing the SAP system for a client – The Testing team, The Manufacturing (MFG) team, and The Procurement team. All of the stories appear in one spreadsheet, with several examples of tasks under each teams’ responsibility. The sprint for both stories is planned to be two weeks and started on the 27th of November at 9:00 AM and is planned to end on the 8th of December (EoD). Each story is separated into 4 columns – To Do: Tasks that haven’t started yet, and are planned to be completed in this sprint. In Progress: Tasks that have started and are planned to be completed in this sprint. To Verify: Tasks that have been completed and require the approval of the client. Done: Tasks that have been completed and have received the approval of the client. Scrum Board Excel Template Scrum Board PowerPoint Template The example consists of two stories, which are for an internal website building project – The UX (User Experience) team and The financial requirements (accounts receivable) coding team. Scrum is a flexible and holistic methodology for managing small to medium scale projects, originally designed for software development projects where TTM (Time to Market) is crucial. The methodology can be used in managing projects from other fields, while the basis is the same. The methodology's basis is that the client(s) frequently change their requirements, and this iterative and agile approach will allow the developers to meet these ever-changing demands. Scrum Board Template PowerPoint Scrum Board using JIRA The JIRA tool is a popular online tool for managing projects while using the Scrum methodology. Once the project is set up, the tool can generate charts, graphs, dashboards, etc. To use the tool, you will need to create a user. Once this is done, entering the JIRA site will lead the user to the following menu – Choose “Create a new project” to begin the setup process. Once clicked, the following menu will appear - Choose an attribute in the above 3 blue fields. Clicking on the “Submit” button will make the following menu appear – Give the project a name, and click on “Create project.” Write down all of the tasks which need to be done in the Backlog section of the page. Once all of the “To Do” tasks are written down, click on “Create sprint.” Drag all of the relevant tasks into the top section of the page. Once the tasks are in the sprints’ section, clicking on the grey oval shape on their right side will open up a menu. Scrum Board using JIRA In this menu, it is possible to update many attributes for the task: Assigned team member, importance, comments, labels, etc. Once all of the tasks are updated and assigned, clicking on the “Start sprint” button will open up the following menu. Clicking the “Start” button will open the following view. In this view, it is possible to drag the various tasks from the default “to Do” section to the “In Progress” or the “Done” sections. At the top right section of the page, the number of remaining days of the sprint appears and the “Complete sprint” button. Once the tasks are updated in each daily stand-up meeting, it is possible to generate any reports, diagrams, dashboards, or statistics. These appear in the left or top menu of the page. It is recommended to create a sprint (story) for each team and update it daily. Scrum Board using an online tool (ScrumDo) The ScrumDo tool (link) is an online tool for managing projects while using the Scrum methodology. Once the project is set up, the tool can generate charts, graphs, dashboards, etc. To begin using the tool, it is required to open an account. The procedure is quite simple and consists of a few fields (Name, Company, E-Mail address, etc.). Clicking on the “Sample Workspace” in the middle of the page will lead to the workspace, where it’s possible to add, assign and update tasks. There are four default tasks, and clicking on the pencil icon in the top right-hand corner will open up a menu that allows the user to update the task. Scrum Board with Online Tool Clicking on the “Save Card” button at the top right-hand corner of the page will save the card and revert back to the workspace page. Only the headline will appear on the card, and clicking on it will reveal the tasks’ details. Hovering over the calendar icon will display the tasks’ due date. Once all of the tasks have been updated, it is possible to generate reports, graphs, and dashboards to assist in the daily 15-minute stand-up meetings. For example, the following burndown chart presents the number of hours left until all of the tasks are planned to be completed. Keeping Agile with Scrum Scrum (not to be used interchangeably with Kanban) is one of the most popular Agile methodologies used today in effective project management. Its flexible and visual representation of a project's lifecycle makes it incredibly useful in tackling great and complex efforts. And with a well-crafted Scrum board, your team will see increased productivity in no time.
The two most popular project management methods are Kanban and Scrum. But what's the difference between the two and which should you use?
We know Scrum and Kanban as flavors of Agile. However, the majority of the people don’t know if they are running a Scrum or Kanban in their companies. The first step to understand this difference is…
Scrum is the most popular Agile framework as it provides clear rues and processes. Make sure you do not forget them with this Scrum cheat sheet!
Scrum boards improve productivity and collaboration among sprint teams. Learn more about its benefits and the best practices here.
One of the benefits of scrum’s simplicity is that there is little to no cost to implement tools that provide the transparency for inspection and adaptation oppo
Back in June 2017, we released the first version of our Agile and Scrum Tip Sheet as a free download. Since then, we’ve updated it a few times and have improved the look and usability. The most…
Scrum is successful largely because it is based on values. The collection of Team Values listed here are ones I want Scrum Teams to have..
Elevate your project management skills with this comprehensive guide to the scrum framework and agile planning.
Scrum cheat sheet with Task size and assignment, roles, iterations, product backlog, sprint backlog, story points, burndown chart, team velocity.
Daily Scrum, Sprint Review, Planning and Retrospective are four agile scrum ceremonies. Goals of Scrum ceremonies are improving the product and teamwork.
Here the best 20 agile project management templates in Excel currently available on the web. Read more on Tipsographic.com
Download this Premium Vector about Scrum word lettering illustration, and discover more than 15 Million Professional Graphic Resources on Freepik
Estamos trabajando para ser el socio adecuado para ayudar a las empresas de desarrollo de software personalizado en Argentina
Kanban isn't a new method for managing your to-do lists, but it's certainly kept itself quite in terms of personal productivity. In this post I look at how to use Kanban Boards to manage your to-do lists and keep track of your important tasks.
What's the difference between a Project Manager and Scrum Master? This article clearly lays out scrum master vs project manager roles and responsibilities.
How to run a Daily Scrum Meeting? Why is DSM called Daily Stand up? Key pointers to do an effective DSM by Benzne.
Many new practitioners think Agile and Scrum are one and the same thing. The truth is - they are not. So let's see what is Scrum?
Scrum in one sentence. Lightweight framework based on empiricism and lean, to generate value through adaptive solutions for complex problems.
Buckle up, because we’re about to “sprint” through your introduction to Scrum and Agile (you’ll get that joke by the end of this guide, we promise).
Elevate your project management skills with this comprehensive guide to the scrum framework and agile planning.
Kanban vs Scrum INFOGRAPHIC We’ve often found that going full-blown Scrum/Agile right out of the gate can cause more harm than good. A Kanban approach can provide a team flexibility for their agile implementation that can allow your team to get started down an agile track without disrupting their progress. Before you make a decision […]
Kanban based on single-thread work items but scrum based on batches. Know the differences of scrum board vs kanban board from the blog and choose right one.
Back in June 2017, we released the first version of our Agile and Scrum Tip Sheet as a free download. Since then, we’ve updated it a few times and have improved the look and usability. The most…
A period of time which is short, uniform, and keeps repeating itself, is termed as Sprint. A board which tracks the work done in sprints is known as a Scrum
The Agile Development methodology is considered the finest approach to developing projects in the present time.
Are you good ScrumMaster? Check typical 10 ScrumMasters's failures. ScrumDesk, the easiest scrum project management tool made for Wanna be great teams.
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Scrum Meeting Types Scrum is probably the most popular Agile application, where sprints (an iteration, a repeatable work cycle) are used to improve teamwork, communications, and speed on a project. Scrum gained much popularity due to the concept of daily stand-up meetings, but many other types of meetings are recommended as part of a Scrum approach, such as reviews, retrospectives, planning, etc. Download This Template Now! Scrum Meetings Sprint Planning Meeting Why: The purpose of the Sprint Planning meeting is to agree (and commit to) what can be delivered in the upcoming sprint as well as how will the teamwork achieve it, based on the team’s velocity, capacity, and duration of the sprint. In short, its purpose is to plan and prepare for the upcoming sprint. The meeting's key outputs are a spring goal (what does the team want to achieve by the end of the sprint) and a sprint backlog (list of the product backlog items and related tasks completed in the sprint). What: The agenda of the Sprint Planning should include reviewing the sprint duration, defining the sprint goal, reviewing the team’s capacity and velocity, defining the sprint backlog. Who: The meeting is facilitated by the Scrum Master, where the Product Owner confirms the priority and details of the product backlog items and the entire Development team, which determines the effort required to complete the sprint. Read goals of a Sprint Planning Meeting and its best practices. Daily Stand-Up Meeting Why: The Daily Stand-up meeting, also known as Daily Scrum, is used to share information between the team, preventing critical knowledge or updates from falling through the cracks. Being a daily meeting, usually in the mornings and limited to 15 minutes, where all participants stand up, contributes to team cohesion and focus. While theory recommends daily meetings, in practice, depending on the project's nature, the frequency can be reduced, be decided by the Scrum Master. What: The Daily Stand-up's agenda involves each participant answering 3 questions: a) what did you do yesterday, b) what will you do today, c) are there any obstacles in your way. Any follow-up discussions, like problem-solving, are taken offline. Who: Only the Development Team and Scrum Master attend this meeting. While the Product Owner can join, s/he is not expected to contribute to the meeting, only observe. Sprint Review Meeting Why: While the Sprint Planning meeting is held at the beginning of the newsprint, the sprint review meeting is held at the end of a sprint to assess the project against the sprint goal and allow the team to show what has been accomplished, usually as a demo of the new features. The meeting is intended to gather feedback and promote collaboration, resulting in an updated product backlog used for the next sprint. What: The agenda for a Sprint Review Meeting includes setting the scene by highlighting what was the sprint goal, present what is going to be demonstrated, demo the new features, close the meeting with the updated product backlog. Who: Participants in this meeting typically include the Development Team, the Product Owner, the Scrum Master, and any key stakeholders invited by the Product Owner, such as management or customers. Sprint Retrospective Meeting Why: The Sprint Retrospective meeting is held at the very end of a sprint and enables a period of critical reflection by the team on how the sprint went and what can be done to improve working to make the next sprint more productive. While the focus of the sprint review is on what the team is building, the retrospective looks at how the team builds it and what lessons can be gathered. What: The agenda of a Sprint Retrospective covers three questions to be answered by each participant: a) what went well during the sprint and we should continue doing, b) what went wrongdoing the sprint and we should stop doing, and c) what could we start doing differently to improve. Finally, a list of commitments to the next sprint is defined. Who: Attendees of this meeting are the entire team, including the Product Owner and the Scrum Master, who puts together a list of prioritized and actionable commitments to the next sprint resulting from the retrospective.Check Out Our article on Sprint Retrospective meeting template with agenda. Backlog Grooming/Refinement Meeting Why: The Backlog Refinement, also known as grooming, is actually an ongoing activity that should be led by the Product Owner with the purpose of better clarifying what is entailed in each of the product backlog items, as these are usually too large or poorly defined. However, it may be beneficial for large sprints to have a separate time-boxed Backlog Refinement Meeting near the end of the sprint to ensure the backlog is ready for the next sprint. By having this additional checkpoint meeting, the Product Owner can work with the team to clarify assumptions and answer questions in advance of the Sprint Planning meeting, enabling the Sprint Planning to later be kept focused and using as much information as possible. What: The Backlog Refinement meeting agenda includes reviewing the product backlog and questions and answers for each product backlog item in preparation for the Sprint Planning meeting. Who: This meeting is led by the Product Owner, who can invite whoever in the Development team to decompose the product backlog items in the sprint discussion. Scrum Meetings Best Practices Daily Stand-ups / Scrum Meetings Best Practices Daily stand-ups can be very effective in managing a project but can also be very challenging at times to manage. If the stand-ups are not planned and managed well, they could lead to people wasting time. If the team feels it is a waste of time attending these meetings, they will stop coming to these meetings. Here are 11 best practices that will help a Scrum Master effectively manage this meeting. 1. Fixed Talking Points The first question and the second question are about the project-related tasks that were done yesterday and what will be done today. This gives everyone an idea about what that team is working on. Impediments are nothing but roadblocks or issues that a particular team member is facing. Examples of impediments are
https://www.scrumdesk.com/wp-content/uploads/SM-daily-checklist_border.png Is everything ready for the daily stand-up? Is the taskboard updated? What about the virtual taskboard? Are too many tasks work in progress? Is someone dealing with the impediments? And many more questions Scrum Masters asks themselves every day. It’s difficult to remember everything a Scrum Master should
Ever since we started to use Kanban I have been thinking about how the ”perfect” kanban board would look like. I have searched for answers in the Kanban literature, but usually the boards shown the…
