This articles series is example how to start using SCRUM in your projects with help provided by ScrumDesk.

Our example project will be a  RSS Reader, application that will provide easy access to RSS articles provided by many web sites.

And we are starting right now…

Who

Product Owner

Scrum Master

1. Login to ScrumDesk

At first is user required to login. After the ScrumDesk starts, Login dialog will  appears. Enter your user name and the password. Also, don’t forget to check selected database. In our example, we will use demo.scrumdesk.com database that is hosting all demo projects.

2. Create new project

Pressing Login button will Projects dialog appear. As we want to create new project, we will click on Create new projecthyperlink in right bottom window corner.

3. Define your project

After few seconds will be new project with default name “Project *17*”  created. In this step we will define our project.

Sprint length

Scrum method split development time in time boxes called Sprint. Sprint is typically 30 calendar days long. ScrumDesk is using  working days. In RSS Reader example we will use 10 working days sprint length.

Bug tracking

ScrumDesk simplifies access to the web bug tracking systems by web browser integration. We don’t want to develop new bug tracking system. We prefer integration.

For RSS Reader project we will use as bug tracking system ScrumDesk forum web pages.

Enter www.scrumdesk.com/forum as bug track URL.

Project documentation home page

Every project needs some kind of documentation.  ScrumDesk integrates view on your web based documentation system (Microsoft SharePoint or some wiki system).

Enter www.scrumdesk.com as project documentation web server.

Your project has to look like this:

Who

Product Owner

Work that needs to be done can be easy distributed in more development teams. ScrumDesk connects teams in one virtually connected social community. This community is notified by ScrumDesk notification system about any change. Teams can be distributed over the internet.

New ScrumDesk project has one user at minimum, the author of the project is automatically imported as Scrum Master.

SCRUM defines few roles for team members:

• Scrum Master is coordinator and SCRUM method implementation validator
• Product Owner is someone who defines project requirements, features and stories. Product owner also definespriorities.
• Developer or Tester is someone who is responsible for requirements implementation and its verification. Typically will estimate story size and implementation duration.
• Visitor is anybody who can see project status, but can not  change anything. Visitor can be managers, stakeholders.

Adding project members

Now we will add product owner and few developers.

Press + button to display all company ScrumDesk users. This list is managed by ScrumDesk administrator. See more inAdministration screencast.

Select user called “ivan” and press OK button

Choose Product Owner in combo box for ivan.

Now you can define others developers, testers and visitors.

Teams definition

Now we can define our teams. RSS Reader will be developed in 2 countries. In USA are stakeholders, Ivan, the product owner and Didier, the project Scrum Master. Team in Slovakia is developing product as outsourced team.

To define team, enter team name in column Team for every project member.

Your team members table has to look like this:

In Step 3 we will define story templates according company process requirements. If your process is not requiring precisely defined steps, go directly to Step 4.

Who

Scrum Master

Story Templates

Is story templates required? No. But they are great when you have defined required development process steps. This is typically case for enterprise companies. On the other side, templates are time saver for even smaller teams.

Let’s create Feature request template and a bug template.

Defining new templates

Login to the ScrumDesk as a Scrum Master. Then switch to Project homepage and click on Templates tab.

At first we will create Bug Template. Click New. New template with default name will be created. Now define template:

• template name – enter text Bug
• template description – enter <enter bug description>
• color – choose red
• tasks required by your process and estimated time required to solve task. To enter tasks, click on Tasks label in template card
  • Bug analyse
  • Fixing
  • Unit test
  • Integration

Bug template	Tasks required by company process for bug fixing

Now we will create two another templates, one  for Feature and one for the Risk.

Create new stories by template

To create ne stories based on templates switch to project backlog or sprint view.Click on small arrow under New menu item.

Now click on template from selector.

New story based on template will be created in the center of the screen.

Now it’s time to write a story name, a description, a priority, assign a category and checks tasks and its duration.

Story detail	Story Tasks

And this is a quickly finished new story.

Summary

Templates makes creating new stories much easier. Templates also fulfill company process requirements.

In this step product owner and development team will try to plan project releases.

Who

Product Owner

Scrum Master

Planning in SCRUM

SCRUM is based on development in time boxes called Sprint. Sprint is a time needed to complete selected stories (features, bugs, requirements, tasks,…). Length of the sprint is typically 30 days, but it depends on a development strategy and product owner requirements.

Every sprint usually ends with a demo of the work completed. At the end of the sprint the development team shows all completed stories to the product owner, stakeholders, management and to anyone who is interested in. These stories are  also typically shipped to product owner.

Customers get a product version shipped in one or more releases. Release contains completed work of the one or more sprints.

In SCRUM are all the sprint stories released typically in one release. ScrumDesk enables to develop more releases in one sprint. To support this advantage feature, ScrumDesk support Planning matrix.

Planning matrix is a matrix of the releases and sprints. Every cell is storyboard filled with stories that will be shipped in given release and developed in time of the sprint.

Product Development
Product Backlog
Release A		Release B
Sprint 1	Sprint 2	Sprint 3
Completed	Completed	To Do	Checked Out	Solved	Completed

ScrumDesk: Release plan

Product owner needs to know details of the release plan. Release plan is plan of dates when completed product version will be shipped to customers.

As example, we are going to release RSS Reader in two releases, one called Release A (alpha) and second release called Final release.

Release planning in ScrumDesk is supported in view Planning. After the start, top row is displaying Product Backlog stories that are unassigned to any sprint (we don’t have stories yet, so its empty).

Bottom row displays sprint selected in combo box.

New Release

No release is created by default. To create new release, log in as Product Owner. Only product owner (and Scrum Master in case of the problems) can create new release.

Click on New link on the right upper corner in Backlog row.

Release dialog will appears. Enter release name, description and estimated date of the release. At the bottom of the dialog will be automatically calculated statistics for this release.

Close the Release dialog and look on the timeline. Small black rectangle  will appears indicating newly created release. Clicking on this rectangle marker, Release dialog details will be displayed.

Now lets create second, and the final, release of the RSS Reader sample.

In release combo box you can see all defined releases and extra items to easy filtering stories unassigned to some of the release or all the stories.

In this step product owner and development team will try to plan project sprints.

Who

Product Owner

Scrum Master

Planning in SCRUM

In Step 4 Planning product releases we defined sprint as time box for developers to complete selected stories.

Product Development
Product Backlog
Release A		Release B
Sprint 1	Sprint 2	Sprint 3

ScrumDesk: Planning sprints

In part 4, product owner defined that RSS Reader must be released in two releases. These are deadlines for development team.

In the Step 4 we defined 3 releases and 1 sprint was created by default.

Time to release can be divided into smaller time boxes, sprints. Our development team agreed with product owner on 10 working days sprint length. This will be constant duration of sprints during development of the RSS Reader.

Sprints can be planned in Planning view. This view can be displayed by click on Planning menu item.

Top half of the screen is a virtual board for all stories that are in backlog and that are unassigned to any team member. These are stories that have to be developed.

Bottom half of the screen is another virtual board displaying stories assigned to Sprint 1 and all releases. Sprint 1 is selected in a left bottom combo box.

Below the combo box is displayed pane with commands that enables to users to create new sprints, remove current sprint and to display sprint details in Sprint detail dialog where they can be edited by Scrum Master.

These details are displayed also in a pane. In advance, sprint details  displays occupation calculated in real time. This is an indicator how much story points can be developed in current sprint. Maximum value is equal to a Sprint capacity value.

Create Sprint 2

Click on bottom New command under Sprint 1 combo box. Sprint details dialog will appear. Enter the values according to a screenshot below and close this dialog.

ScrumDesk supports extra date for demo. This way the sprint demo can be planned later than sprint end. This can occur when product owner, stakeholders or management are unable to plan theirs time to sprint end.

Sprint length is given as a number of working days. ScrumDesk automatically skips weekend days when calculating burn down charts. Thus only working days are required to count.

State of the new sprint is set to Planning. Sprint in this state is in plan phase where stories can be assigned to the sprint. No story can be started. This prevent team members to start stories sooner then team agreed.

Only Scrum master can start sprint. This can be done in combo box State in Sprint detail dialog or using a big red button in a SideView. After the sprint starts, ScrumDesk begin to calculate sprint progress. This will be displayed in burn down charts, time sheet and other reports supported by ScrumDesk.

Sprint can be finished by scrum master only when all stories are completed. In case that some of stories was not completed, scrum master or development team can split stories or tasks to a next sprint and complete stories.

Sprint 3

Now create last Sprint 3.

Result

Your timeline now displays plan for your product: 2 releases and 3 sprints.

In this step product owner and development team are going to plan project sprints.

Who

Product Owner

Creating stories

Target for this step is to create backlog stories.

Product Development

Product Backlog

Stories in scrum are mainly created by product owner. As a first step let’s log in as product owner.

Product owner is responsible for requirements specification and prioritization.

Choose your project and switch to Product Backlog. Product backlog is a container where anyone can see all stories displayed as story cards.

ScrumDesk is primary a virtual board. User experience very near to a wall with story cards.

Creating new stories

Stories can be created on board in different ways:

• by click on New menu item
• by Insert key on your keyboard
• by double-click on board
• using a template from Templates pane displayed by click on arrow below the New menu item

Story

Story in scrum and ScrumDesk is described by a story card containing following attributes:

• Id, (number 5605),  that uniquely identifies story
• Subject, short name of story
• Description, more requirements details
• Priority, (number 50), the level of product owner requirement demand
• Effort value, relative size of story in story points. Estimated value can be selected only from predefined list of values obviously used in scrum method.
• Duration is number of days necessaries 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.
• Theme, name of the theme which group stories

Step – creating stories

Let’s create new story  Adding a channel.

1. Double click board
2. New card is created
3. Enter the subject: Adding a channel
4. Enter the description:As a user I want to add new channel
   - by entering channel URL
   - using a drag and drop from web browser
5. Enter the importance: 90 This will be highest priority story. Priority number and range is depending on Product owner decision. Development team must understand this values range.
   ScrumDesk uses number priority as it gives Product Owner better granularity.
6. As a theme enter User Interface or UI.
7. As you are logged as a product owner, you are not able to change Effort nor Duration properties.

Your card should look like this:

Now you can enter other remaining stories. You will enter stories  in a Grid view. Click Grid menu item .

Story Categorization

Don’t forget to set Theme and/or color of the card. This way you can categorize stories into more categories.

Tags

You can use story tags available in a story detail window. Stories can be filtered by tags from the SideView.

In this step development team is going to estimate stories.

Who

Scrum Master

Developers

Planning Poker^®

Our backlog contains all known stories which has to be developed for product. Team sits down together around the table and they starts to discuss size of each story.

Product Development

Product Backlog

Every developer will get cards with modified sequence of Fibonacci numbers.

Then Scrum Master will select first story. Every developers and testers will estimates they size of the story:

During the game they hides theirs estimation. When round ends, they are going to show cards. Now they see that John and Bill are close with values, but Andrea is saying that given story will be 13 times bigger. Andrea must explain why she is thinking this number, now. They will talk about these numbers and new poker round begins. This will repeat until they will agree on just one number. This is very important!

One number for story. This is the number entered in the ScrumDesk story card.

Trademarks

PLANNING POKER® is a reg. trademark of ©Mountain Goat Software, LLC
Sequence of values is ©Mountain Goat Software, LLC

In this step product owner and development team will plan sprint.

Who

Product Owner

Scrum Master

Developers

Visitors

Sprint planning meeting

Development team meats with product owner on sprint planning meeting. Product owner shows the team his plan for first sprint. Product owner chose stories by top importance (priority).

Product Development

Product Backlog

Release A

Sprint 1

Planning

………

Planning View

Switch to the Planning View by click on corresponding menu item. This view provides access to all product planning activities. Users can based on theirs role in a project to:

• manage releases
• manage sprints
• assign stories to sprint and to release
• change details of stories in Detail window

View displays two boards. Board display stories of sprint and release selected from corresponding combo boxes which are near to board.

We prepared Release A and Sprint 1 in previous steps. We have backlog stories written in our backlog. Now we will plan our first Sprint.

Prepare the view

Let’s display stories unassigned to any sprint:

• Choose <Backlog unassigned> from combo box in the upper board.
• Choose Sprint 1 from combo box in the bottom board
• Choose Release A from combo box in the bottom board on the right side

Assign stories into sprint

Sort backlog stories by Importance. Now you can drag stories from upper board to bottom showing the Sprint 1.

Drag stories until the sprint’s occupation indicator will not indicate sprint fullness. This indicator calculates sprint occupation by sum of stories’ sizes. This sum must be less or equals then Sprint capacity value entered in the Sprint detail window.

Occupation indicator

Sprint detail window

As you can see capacity of Sprint 1 is set to 5 story points. This is a value upon team agreed. It is maybe to low, but team is just starting first sprint and team members don’t know how fast are they able to work.

We can assign only one story to this sprint. It is a story “Protocol selection (priority 60, size 5)”. Drag this story from upper board and drop it to bottom board.

You have completed planning for your first sprint now.

It is good to do sprint planning before each sprint. This is a way how to develop your product in an iterative manner.

Task planning

Every team member must specify tasks on which he will be working. He must estimate duration of every task. Total time of the work will be checked to this duration.

Task can be planned in ScrumDesk different ways.

1. Most valuable is Task board. Task board displays stories and theirs tasks in a Kanban view.
2. Tasks can be specified in story card on a page Tasks. Tasks can be added, removed, edited and it is possible to change order of the task in story.
3. Next view where tasks can be managed is Story Detail with Task page.

Who

Scrum Master

Developers

Visitors

Starting the sprint

Scrum Master login to ScrumDesk before the Daily Scrum Meeting.

The first thing he must to do is to start the sprint. To start it display SideView/Sprint and press big redStart sprint button.

If sprint is started all  changes made to remaining and duration time, changes to stories state are tracked by ScrumDesk. ScrumDesk is using this information for automatic reports calculation, history tracking and etc.

Stand up meeting

During the sprint planning meeting team members agreed on a time and place where daily stand up meetings will be.

Every team member must update their status.

Task Board

Stand up meeting is made in front of Task board.

Task board displays stories in first left column. Following columns contains tasks distributed by state.

Task

New task can be created by click on  button in yellow (ToDo) column when mouse is over it.

Task is presented by small task card. Task card displays the name of the task, remaining time and estimated total duration. Picture in the bottom left corner is task operator picture.  Click on  button to delete the task,

To change the state of the task, just drag the task to given column of the task board. Statistics for the story and for columns will be updated immediately.

Double click on the card to display more task’s details.

Burn Down chart

Team must be able to distinguish current status of the work. One way of how to visualize it is Burn Down chart.

Burn down chart displays remaining story points that must be developed to given dat.

Days of the sprint is displayed on the X axis. Y axis displays number of story points required to develop.

Ideal progress is represented by white dashed line.  The orange line displays actual progress.

If  orange line is above the white, progress is slower than expected. Orange line bellow the white indicates good progress.

The goal is to reach 0 story points at the end of the sprint.

Burn Up chart

Other way to display the sprint’s progress is usage of the burn up chart. This chart displays story points developed to given day vs. total size of the effort to given day.

It is good to visualize changes of the sprint backlog size.

Quick Statistics

Overall statistics of the sprint is displayed in the SideView.