Blog on Agile principles, practices, and project management tools
Meaningful Agile
ScrumDesk 3.15.1: User Stories Map, Company Account Management
Auto-assignment Are your team members lazy to update the board? Are you poor scrum master who updates cards of team members? ScrumDesk auto-assigns task cards on drag and drop intentionally. However, there is still some, however. However, some scrum masters who support not-so-agile teams needed to update the board without auto-assigning their name. Now you can configure that in your projects settings. The latest changes Are you lost about the [...]
ScrumDesk 3.14.2: Performance, Security, Usability
ScrumDesk v3.14.2 brings major changes we think you will like. Our aim for this version was to speedup the tool, increase security and usability. Changes are not so visible for the first sight as most of them were internal. Context menu For easier planning we have added context menu for backlog items with possibility to move, or split backlog item into either other sprint, release or product backlog. Right click a big [...]
ScrumDesk 3.14.1: User Stories Mapping Improvements
User Stories Mapping We are proud to say we finalized user story map, the new feature of ScrumDesk. At least up to the level, we think that usability and performance are perfect. But that doesn't mean we do not want to improve it. We have a couple of additional ideas as well, so be ready for planning possibilities, feature level, and others. What we changed: Epic card displays progress bar [...]
Certified Scrum Master, May 10-11, 2016, Bratislava
ScrumDesk and Tomasz de Jastrzebiec Wykowski organize Certified ScrumMaster workshop in Bratislava, Slovakia. When? Where? May 10-11, 2016, Hotel Barónka, Mudrochova 2, Bratislava – Rača. How much? Till the end of Feb - 999€, later 1200€. VAT is not included. Registration About trainer Tomasz is first Certified Scrum Trainer from Poland. In 2010 he started ProCognita to help IT organizations in their quest for Agile Culture as an independent [...]
ScrumDesk 3.13.2: User Stories Mapping, Import from JIRA
User stories mapping User story mapping is a technique which we believe helps readability of the product backlog. ScrumDesk has provided it from its first version in form of free canvas displayed in Desk view. Based on your feedback we have implemented improved mode STORY MAP supporting a matrix of epics broken into backlog items. The first row of the user story map displays your epics. Additional rows contain backlog items assigned to particular epic. On [...]
ScrumDesk 3.12.2: Task Types, Definition of Done
Task types Agile teams are multidisciplinary teams so you should have an analyst, developer, tester, or even operation role in your team. And everybody needs to find out an appropriate card on the kanban board quickly. ScrumDesk has supported colors for subtask from the first version. The intent of this feature was to highlight the type of subtask and recognize them easily. An experience from our consultancy team [...]
ScrumDesk 3.12: Custom Fields
Custom fields You asked for them many times. ScrumDesk supports custom fields for backlog items and tasks now. Well, for a now it is MVP in which you can configure them and enter data. Filtering, searching, group by custom fields will come in upcoming versions soon. Custom fields can be configured on Project Settings page where you can add or remove them. Data for custom fields can be edited in Side view [...]
ScrumDesk 3.11: The Capacity Planner. How much can we commit?
Capacity Planner Your sprint backlog is planned and backlog items are broken into subtasks. They are even estimated and assigned. Now, the moment of truth. Will you be able to finish what you have just committed to? Scrum teams check the capacity of all team members by a simple form. Capacity = number of days at work during the sprint * number of hours per day. In ScrumDesk [...]
ScrumDesk 3.10: The Sprint Review Report. What has been finished?
Sprint review report Do you want to be prepared for a sprint review session with all information necessary to review your commitments and the status of the outcome? Sprint report is the document that summarizes: Sprint title and goals Sprint start and end dates Information about the team who worked on sprint items Information about work spent vs. capacity per team member Statistics of planned vs. completed sprint backlog [...]
ScrumDesk 3.9: Retrospective done well
Retrospective techniques Do you need to energize your retrospectives? There is one very easy receipt to try. Just changing retrospective format or technique helps a lot. ScrumDesk enables now to apply following retrospective techniques: classic Good vs. Better, Star Fish, Mad Sad Glad, 4L, Star Stop Continue, 6 Thinking Hats, and even possibility to place Kudo Box card to say thank your colleagues. Click TECHNIQUES in the top menu [...]
How To: Business Model and the Product Strategy
Agile works very well in a product-oriented environment. It’s understandable, as Agile Manifesto as a key document of whole Agile stresses the functional product as one of the most important values. When implementing agile practices, Product development is very often reduced to: Description of responsibilities for Product Owner role, Request recording, Maintenance of backlogs, and, maybe, the planning process. It is, in my opinion, just a set of [...]
ScrumDesk 3.8: Print the Product Backlog. Filters and Mentions.
Print the Product Backlog Printing has appeared in ScrumDesk. As we have great planning experience with physical cards, we decided on a card layout that we suggest to clients of our consultancy team. Printed card layout provides fundamental information necessary for proper release or sprint planning. Print is available in Backlog and Plan view. Printed are just visible cards so the filter is considered. If you have a [...]
ScrumDesk 3.7: User Story Template
Performance improvements We continued with performance improvements targeting the second(s) goal instead of minutes for large backlogs. We are happy to share we were successful, but also that doesn't mean we have ended. As Backlog and Work views are the most used parts of the application, we have chosen them for performance improvements of back-end service calls and also for intensive local caching. The first read will take [...]
ScrumDesk 3.6: Team Capacities Leveling
Performance improvements, part I. As the first of performance improvements, we concentrated on the Kanban board that is the most used part of the application. We integrated caching into the Kanban board. The first load has been shortened by 25%. Following loads of kanban board is a matter of seconds instead of dozens of seconds. JSON response by API is generated faster. Team leveling To support better self-organization [...]
ScrumDesk 3.5: Instant Tasks Sync, Cumulative Flow for Kanban, Work logs, History
Instant synchronization of tasks The board is alive finally. Adding new tasks, changing them, moving, cloning, or deleting them will update the Kanban boards of all team members in seconds. Just change them and everybody sees the same. Cumulative Flow Chart The Cumulative Flow Chart enables Scrum Masters to identify gaps in the process. Teams can see how backlog total size has changed, how they are able to finish [...]