Quick Start 2008
2 What is ScrumDesk ScrumDesk is project management tool supporting Scrum agile project management method. ScrumDesk demo is provided as hosted application where user has ScrumDesk installed locally and project data are stored on hosted database. Final product is installable locally. Why ScrumDesk? ScrumDesk provides intuitive view on stories (tasks) using card view and enable project management collaboration. ScrumDesk is not only for project managers. ScrumDesk connects project teams, team members with customers and management. Everyone can easily identify status of the project using burndown chart. ScrumDesk provide at any time easy access to collaboration tools including messaging, internet calls, emails, web pages and bug tracking systems. ScrumDesk also support LDAP for easy user management. This Quick start guide will take you through the basic ScrumDesk features. If you need more information please check or don t hesitate to send email to our support@scrumdesk.com. Benefits for managers Easy team members management Support for multiple teams even dislocated Releases and sprints planning Instant project status metrics Retrospective ideas to get development process improved for product owners Close relations with development team Instant feedback about changes Easy product features planning Direct connection to developers Timeline for main project development events like demo, release, sprints for developers and QA Tracking work Easy sprint status identification Collaboration with product owner, scrum master even in distributed scenarios Latest stories changes
3 Technology ScrumDesk is application programmed using modern technologies: Microsoft.NET Windows Presentation Foundation that is perfect solution for creating natural look and feel user interface applications. SQL Server 2005 that is perfect solution for easy administration, scalability, reliability and security. Intuitive management Scrum Project Product backlog Releases Sprints Retrospective Name Team All stories Date Timeboxed iteration Selected stories must be completed Ideas Voting Scrum is an agile iterative method for project management. This method can be use not only for software development. Scrum, as project method, started in Toyota Corp. in car development process. Project requirements, defects, risks are called Story. In Scrum, every project requirements are organized in a Product backlog. Project development time is divided to iteration called Sprint. Developed product is released to the customers in one or more Releases. To improve development process, team members can provide feedback towards to management in Retrospective. Roles in Scrum: Product owner represents customer, his requirements and satisfaction. Scrum Master ensures correct Scrum method usage. Developer, tester is developing product. Visitor is obviously somehow connected to project, but it cannot change its progress. Good example of visitors is consulting experts, selected product users or executives.
4 Working with stories Any task, requirement, defect or risk can be represented by a story. Stories are displayed using story card concept. Card concentrates information about story, their detailed tasks and progress. Story Card Story tasks Story progress Story card can be resized, selected or moved across the desk. Stories can be easily joined to groups by assigning card color. Every card displays story status in the top left corner. The desk containing cards can be freely zoomed and moved across a screen. Maximized desk Maximized card Installation ScrumDesk can be downloaded from address sent to you by email. To start installation, click on the Launch button. ScrumDesk minimum requirements: Installation page Microsoft Windows XP or Windows Vista Microsoft.NET 3.0 Framework, that can be downloaded here. If you use a Firefox web browser, please install FFClickOnce plug-in. The Firefox is not compatible with Microsoft ClickOnce installation used by ScrumDesk.
5 Starting intuitive Scrum management After ScrumDesk starts, a Login window appears. Please enter your login name and password you ve received. You cannot change projects server and database while in demo version. Login window You can choose the project to manage by double clicking on project s name after you are logged in. You can also create a new project by clicking on Create New Project in bottom right corner. Project selection Project In ScrumDesk, project has its name, bug track url and homepage url. It is possible also set default sprint length used for all new sprints here. Team members can be assigned to the project by selecting from company users list. Company user list is managed by administrator. Only the Scrum Master cans build-up the team. Project team members
6 Team members can be grouped into the teams. View by teams Timeline ScrumDesk shows your project iterations and events in a timeline. Events type Sprint Timeline Active sprint, sprint for current day Release event Demo event, product owner will come to see demo of sprint stories Current day Arrows to scroll time You can easy scroll the timeline easily by dragging it or clicking on arrow buttons in the right corner. Project backlog Project backlog is a collection of stories that product owner wants to implement. The story can be added to the product s backlog also by any member of team. Stories can be freely moved around the desk. You can scroll the desk by using preview pane or simply click on the desk area, wait a few milliseconds and drag. Cursor will change and you can freely move the desk.
7 Preview pane The desk can be zoomed by using a zoom track bar in right bottom corner or simply by using Ctrl + Mouse Scroll Wheel. Double click on the track bar will reset the zoom back to 100%. Zoom pane Backlog can be viewed in Desk view with stories cards or in Grid view like table of stories. Grid view can be used for easy filtering, sorting and grouping your stories by different attributes. Desk view Grid view Stories can be filtered at any time by clicking on the info pane. Info pane Filter dialog enables user to filter stories by story state, category or text. Story s id, subject, description, remaining and estimated attributes are searched for given text. Another possibility is to filter out just the stories assigned to logged user. Filter definition
8 Story The story describes the product owner requirement which must be implemented in the project. In ScrumDesk every story has following attributes: Id, that uniquely identifies story Subject, short name of story Description, more requirements details Priority, the level of product owner requirement demand Estimated value, relative size of story in story points. Estimated value can be selected only from predefined list of values obviously used in scrum method. Remaining is number of days necessary to finish the story. Operator, team member responsible for story implementation State of story is indicated using color bar in left top corner. Clicking the bar you will change the story state. For more details about state look at Story states. Tasks, every story can have multiple tasks or steps needed to be done to complete the story. Every task has its own state (the same meanings as story state) and remaining time required to task s completion. Tasks can be processed by more team members at once. When you use tasks, remaining value of parent story will be counted from these tasks. In this case, you will not be able to enter story s remaining value directly. Sprint represents a timebox in which stories going be developed. Release gives you information about a date when customer would start using this story in product release version. Release can be done after each sprint or it can include stories from more sprints. It depends on your customer or product owner needs. Story definition Story can be displayed as story mini card. Mini card displays only story subject, priority and estimated story points. Mini story card
9 Stories can be organized into virtual groups by using category (sometimes called as theme in scrum method) or by using color. This gives you an opportunity to level complex projects with many stories. Story states Unplanned Assigned Check out Solved Completed New story is Unplanned. After the sprint planning team member Assigns stories that she will implement. Team member Checks story out when starts working on it. After programmer completes story implementation, she will change story state to Solved. This is an indication for testers that they can test the story. If the implementation is correct, tester changes story state to Completed. Planning In planning view, the scrum master and the product owner can assign stories into the sprints and releases. In this view they also can define sprints and releases. With ScrumDesk you can develop product parallel. In one sprint, stories for more releases can be developed. ScrumDesk offers this feature even though it s no fully compliant with scrum method. We think that sometimes this practice is required and handy. For planning process ScrumDesk uses a unique planning matrix solution. You can imagine your sprints and releases as the matrix where: sprint are in rows, releases are in columns, stories are in cells. Planning matrix Planning view is divided in two parts both containing list of stories. You can change sprint or release and see required stories. Story is assigned to sprint or release simply by using drag and drop between lists.
10 Planning view For example, assigning story from backlog to sprint/release can be done as follows: 1. Select Project backlog from upper Sprints combo. 2. Select required sprint/release from bottom Sprints combo. 3. Now find your story in product backlog part and easily drag it to the sprint/release stories list in the bottom. 4. Changing the release before dragging will also assign story to release. You can change sprint for selected stories list also by clicking on the sprint bar in the timeline. Stories can be also easily filtered by clicking on stories list header.
11 Sprint Scrum is based on time boxed iterations. Iteration is called Sprint. Sprint is defined by the product owner and the team: Sprint details Name of the sprint Goal of the sprint Start date is date when sprint starts Sprint length is sprint duration in days. This value depends on default project sprint length, but can be changed Demo date is date when customers or product owner meet with the team to view a demo of completed work. Estimated velocity is a forecast for maximum amount of work that team is capable of. It is defined in storypoints. Completed is sprint completeness indicator. State of the sprint, can be planning, in progress and done Storypoints is sum of storypoints estimated for all sprint stories Occupation is indicator of sprint fullness o for 0% - 75% occupation o for 75%- 90 % occupation o for full sprint During planning phase, you select stories that should be completed in the sprint. Sprint view can be used daily by your team. You can simply use it to make daily scrum meetings. Sprint view displays stories in intuitive way, the same way as paper story cards on a cork board. Team members can easily track stories progress just by entering remaining value. They can also check story progress on a story chart. Some story properties can be changed depending on logged user role. For example, you can have team members with the Visitor role. This role enables user to see project details, stories, progress but the Visitor cannot change any of these values. Next sprint view Team performance is sometimes better than expected. In this case developer can take story from the next planned sprint and add it into current sprint. For ease of use, ScrumDesk provides Next Sprint pane displaying unassigned stories. Adding the unassigned story to the current sprint is as simple as drag and drop story from next sprint pane to the current sprint desk. You can also postpone story to the next sprint by the same way, dragging from the current sprint to the next sprint.
12 Double click on the story card displays story details in a detail dialog. Next sprint view Tracking progress ScrumDesk displays sprint progress using a burndown chart. This chart shows real progress versus ideal progress by calculating remaining values over time. Burndown chart X-axis displays date, Y-axis displays sum of stories remaining values. To display value for given day just mouse over serie data point. Click on this small chart to display full screen chart. Retrospective Retrospective in the scrum gives team a chance to continuously improve quality of the development process. Anyone from the team can say his opinion or idea to get things better. ScrumDesk supports retrospective not only by writing ideas, but team members can also vote for the best ideas. Every idea shows total points value so the team can easily identify most wanted ideas. Moreover, each team member can see his vote (points he assigned) for ideas. Idea can be deleted only by its author or the scrum master. Retrospective idea
13 Integration Bug track support ScrumDesk integrates your favorite bug track page together with the project management. Team members can work with bug tracking system they are familiar with. You don t need to change or convert your bug database, just keep using your preferred bug tracker. Project homepage Many companies use their own document management systems (wiki, Microsoft SharePoint...). ScrumDesk provides access to such systems and integrate them into the management desk. Team collaboration ScrumDesk connects anyone with story mini team clicking on ScrumDesk integrates: button in story caption. Internet calls for easy call. If you want to use this feature, you need to install client, for example Skype or Microsoft NetMeeting. Email Team member web url for access to his web pages, blog Card caption After click on the button Contact team member dialog is displayed: Contact Team Member window
14 LDAP support To simplify user management ScrumDesk support user import from LDAP server. Import can be accessed only by administrator. In demo version this is unsupported feature. Importing from LDAP
15 If you need more information please check or don t hesitate to send email to support@scrumdesk.com. ScrumDesk contacts scrumdesk@scrumdesk.com Sales: sales@scrumdesk.com Support: support@scrumdesk.com