ScrumDesk Quick Start

2008

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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 www.scrumdesk.com 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

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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
• Name
Project • Team

• All stories
Product backlog
Releases • Date

• Timeboxed iteration
Sprints • Selected stories must be completed

• Ideas
Retrospective • 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.

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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.

Installation page

ScrumDesk minimum requirements:

 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.

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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

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Team members can be grouped into the teams.

View by teams

Timeline
ScrumDesk shows your project iterations and events in a timeline.

Timeline

Events type

Sprint

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.
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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

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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

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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.

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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.

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Sprint
Scrum is based on time boxed iterations. Iteration is called Sprint. Sprint is defined by the product
owner and the team:

 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
Sprint details
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.

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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

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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 button in story caption.
ScrumDesk integrates:

 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

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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

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If you need more information please check www.scrumdesk.com

or don’t hesitate to send email to support@scrumdesk.com.

ScrumDesk contacts

scrumdesk@scrumdesk.com

Sales: sales@scrumdesk.com

Support: support@scrumdesk.com

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