While being in agile transition, teams look for information how to do agile correctly. Often the question sounds ’How to DO agile?‘ The guideline we prepared might be helpful to shorten your transfromation period and stabilize agile environment earlier.

Download full paper as PDF from http://www.scrumdesk.com/Download/Documents/AgileResources/ScrumGuidelines.pdf

One customer asked us an interesting question regarding relations of stories in ScrumDesk.

What ScrumDesk supports now is simple relations tracking solution. Very simple and basic functionality – possibility to track, see and print out it in documents.

For the first look some basic functionality in ScrumDesk is missing. Functionality similar to Gannt chart way of relations (Finish-Start,Finish-Finish, etc.).

Gannt chart relations (Source: Wikipedia)

As you probably know, a good story in agile is written to fulfill INVEST principle:

1. Independent
2. Negotiable
3. Valuable
4. Estimable
5. Sizable
6. Testable

The first is (and not by coincidence) Independent. The reason is simple. To track dependencies in your hundreds stories backlog  is a mess. A big mess. A task that is highly potential waste.

In our experience 80-90% of stories could be rewritten into independent stories. How to do that? I do not have an answer for you. It is not easy, it requires an experience, feeling and still see a value in a slice. But it can be done.

How to solve dependencies?

But how to manage dependencies? IT IS ABOUT PRIORITY! Priority is a driver how to order things in agile, not dependencies. Order stories into releases and sprints. This helps you to forget about dependencies. It is more important.

Set an importance of basic functionality higher than advanced functionality. This way you can add another brick to your wall and make it higher. Brick by brick.

Build a product brick by brick (Source: David Korona, http://www.davidkorona.com)

P.S.

Of course, enterprise backlogs probably require to manage dependencies as well, but it is typically program/product level in which you need to track dependencies of stories on which more teams are working. But this requires probably different beast to manage it.

What about great product owners?

Scrum as project management is using concept of index cards introduced in Extreme Programming (XP).

Cards are supposed to establish conversation and clarification of requirements.  Card in ScrumDesk displays more details than paper index card while still provides visibility.

ScrumDesk index card’s advantages comparing to other project management tools:

• resizable
• many colors
• only necessary information displayed by default
• edit by one click
• automatic save
• quick access to team involved in implementation of the story

Reaching wider community is for us absolutely welcome not just because of numbers (either count or price). For us the value is a knowledge  how scrum adaptation is done.

It is very interesting to see how such simple project management framework is adapted  in so many ways.

ScrumDesk development begun as materialized idea based on Scrum and XP from trenches book written by Henrik Kniberg.

The first year of ScrumDesk development we were (maybe) naive. We have decided to implement  ”pure scrum” approach. Of course a reality, trainings, discussions and requests were the source of knowledge to improve tool. Improve it just slightly?

Story

I am sorry to repeat the concept of the story. Maybe it is more for beginners, but there are still a lot of them. And they are always welcome to learn how to improve.

Story in Scrum is short description of what is necessary to develop for who with why on mind. To provide the first template for it (definition by Mike Cohn):

As a [user role], I want [to have something] so that [the benefit].

Typical problem of new teams is how to write stories especially once the team will recognize feature, technical or spike stories. And teams solve this problem by special attribute (or tag).  It is not just this attribute that is necessary to repeat.

Additional could be:

• story type – functional, requirement, technical or spike?
• default estimation – yes, some teams prefer to start with all stories of the same size hence provide “mean” value for estimation range
• default duration – as an indication of how story should be long
• color – do you use colors to indicate story type or importance or assigned team?
• theme

ScrumDesk simplifies story writing providing possibility to customize story templates.

Story templates

Scrum Master is able to prepare stories templates that can be reused by the team to create a new story.

Templates are the way how to keep a backlog managed.

ScrumDesk provides possibility to define different templates according project.

Templates definition

To define templates Scrum Master should login to project. Tempaltes are defined on Project/Customization page.

New template can be added by click on New link.

ScrumDesk story template allows to define:

• template name
• template description
• definition time
• story default description
• story type (user story, technical, epic, etc.)
• Effort (Fibonacci or manually entered value)
• default duration
• tasks

We decided to allow to define tasks as many teams defines the list of default tasks that every story must contains. This list is typically part of definition of done.

How to create new story based on template

Team member can easy select the template from New menu item. Point a mouse pointer to small arrow and templates list will displays.

Now user should just click the template and new story will be created in the center of the board.

Summary

Story templates are helpful not just make stories definition more efficient, but they allows  to keep backlog structured the same way even the team is large and distributed.

Our previous blog posts were about core product ownership approaches how to prioritize backlog according to business value.

Another dimension a product owner should know is expected customer satisfaction. Satisfaction with developed feature or story.

Mr. Noriaki Kano developed Kano model as valuable technique helping to recognize that. Applying this method the product owner can identify importance of stories by asking questions like these:

Is the feature mandatory? We will not earn additional revenue once we have it but without it the product doesn’t fulfill existence principles.

Having a feature, will customer say: “Hey, that’s nice! I like this approach and it seems to be really helpful.” This feature is excitement. It is possible differentiator.

Well, guys  improved a performance of the application. This is valuable.  Comparing to other products, this product is one I would like to use.

Hmm, this feature is indifferent. It doesn’t matter if this feature is or is not implemented. If vendor provides it, ok, I accept it. If it’s not implemented, no problem then.

This feature is really questionable. I am not sure if I am going to pay for product with such feature. It will probably slower me. Also, I assume it will complicates usability in my company. Let’s think about different  product.

Ohhh no! Not the feature like that. You are kidding. This feature reverse me to really find a different product.

Such perspective is great way to identify priorities in complex backlog.

Illustration of features vs satisfaction (Wikipedia)

How ScrumDesk integrates Kano model

A story in ScrumDesk provides possibility to gather data about expected customer satisfaction level in story detail window, Priority tab.

The level of satisfaction is possible to change in stories grid where data can be analyzed using filters and grouping features that grid allows. Grid allows an inline editing so data can be changed easy.

If the backlog is complex, then tree map can helps to product owner to validate priorities vs customer satisfaction.

Stories grouped by satisfaction level, color by the current status
Explanation: One excitement story is developed (green) even there are more mandatory stories. Product owner should validate priorities & contact team.

Another overview of the backlog is available in Satisfaction and effort chart. This chart is accessible in Reports/Prioritization tab. The chart displays distribution of effort according to assumed customer satisfaction level. It is easy to recognize if developers are focused on correct stories.

Product owner  is often confronted with a large backlog. This post continues  to explain how to consider priority of stories. See principles in previous post.

Measuring risk and positive value allows to calculate the order in which stories should be developed. Very nice and simple visualization can be Risk  vs. Value chart.

Chart is split into four segments. Small dots represent stories. They are colored according to the status of the story.

As Product Owner you would like to deliver the most valuable stories as the first. But development team can find them too risky.  Good risk management suggests to focus on the riskiest items as the first.

Combining these two attributes ScrumDesk suggests to develop the most valuable, but the riskiest stories as the first.

Second stories to be develop are still stories with the high value, but they are less risky.  Development team is able to finish them in more manageable way.

Which stories should be never done? The riskiest with the lowest value. Why to develop something that  earns $0 while it is very risky?

What to do in this case? Explain customers about your point of view and delete them from a backlog. If you can…

Using this approach your development team can be sure it develops what is needed. One look on such diagram helps to  Scrum Master and Product Owner to validate the order and focus the team.

Agile coaches teach  teams to develop a  business value that is delivered at the end of the sprint.

But should be a value an indicator of the priority? Yes, but not the only one. There are many other attributes we often forget to consider.

We suggest to apply different approach. We would like to have a possibility to calculate priority according business value but considering  risk and effort as well. This way we can have the priority more precise, not just guess.

Product owners often see only  positive business value. It is a value a company will gain if story is delivered. But there is negative value that drags your revenue down. Example of such negative value is non logical login during pages transitions.

Risk should be not forgotten.  You can see risk management done in different ways. From High->Low or as numbered risk level. The more risky story, the higher priority.

Dependencies is number of relationships to other stories. The more dependencies the higher priority as problem seems to be more complex.

Effort makes priority non-linear. What is smaller it can be done sooner as it is much more precisely estimable. Big stories are typically epics that must be detailed hence they are not good for the implementation.

ScrumDesk uses this approach after consultations with our top    customers. We learnt to apply this way in our backlog. It provides us  validation of our priority feeling comparing to calculation.

It is very easy to accept proposed priority by clicking  Set to  importance.

How to split or move story (Screencast)

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 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 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.