Hi,

as I promised, today I will cover Scrum with MS PROJECT 2016! But, first of all what do we need form Scrum (I will talk what we need – by the book)? We need: Product Backlog and Sprint Backlog. Product Backlog is dynamic board in which Product owner can put any feature that he or she wants, whenever he or she wants. Sprint Backlog is board in which Team put features from Product Backlog (what they think that can be done in that Specific Sprint). OK. This was a short description. now, let’s see what can be done wit MS PROJECT!

When you open a brand new project you need to choose Scrum Project like:

and you will get here:

This is brand new View called – Sprint Planning Board! As you can see, there is a No Sprint Column, and Sprint1, Sprint2 and Sprint 3 Column as well.

In Scrum, each Sprint should have same and equal duration, and it should be max 4 weeks (1 month). How long are those sprints?

As you can see, there are by default, three sprints, and each of them have 2 weeks duration. But what If you want for example 5 Sprints, and each of them should have 3 weeks duration? You can do this, of course. First, let’s say that my Project will start at Monday, 11/15/2017. Now I have to calculate the Custom Finish Date for all my Sprints like this:

1. First Sprint should start at 11/13/2017 and it will be 3 weeks long and will ended at 12/03/2017
2. Second Sprint should start at 12/04/2017 and it will be 3 weeks long will ended at 12/24/2017
3. Third Sprint should start at 12/25/2017 and it will be 3 weeks long will ended at 01/14/2018
4. Fourth Sprint should start at 01/15/2017 and it will be 3 weeks long will ended at 02/04/2017
5. Fifth Sprint should start at 02/05/2017 and it will be 3 weeks long will ended at 02/25/2017

Now, if you want 5 Sprints instead of 3, you should customize Custom date to the 02/25/2017

As you can see, three more Sprints are generated, and each has 2 weeks duration (by default). Now, if you change duration for Sprint 4 and 5 you will get:

Sprint 6 is still here, and it will be finished at 03/11/2018, even the Custom date is 02/25/2017, and you can not get rid of this sprint. My first complaint is, that I will like to have possibility to define the length of my Sprints and a number of them. This is not a perfect solution in MS Project!

Ok, what you get is:

Now you have to define Tasks in a Product Backlog (called – No Sprint, and it can’t be renamed. Another thing that is missing here):

By the book, Product Backlog should contain Features, and in the Sprint Backlog should be this Features and Task needed to be done to make this Feature. Here we have only Tasks. So you can’t split Feature to Tasks. Another thing that is missing.

If you want to put first 3 Features in Sprint #1, and another 4 in Sprint # 2, just Drag and drop them there:

If you click on any Task (or Feature) anywhere you will get classic Task Information in which you can assign Resource or whatever you might consider that you must put.

Now you can look at Sprint Planning Sheet:

and you will get:

Here you can see all Features in one View, and also which of it belong to which Sprint. Feature which has No sprint belongs to the Product Backlog. As you can see, here you can change the Sprint for the Feature, and it behave like you drag and drop at Sprint Planning Board! You can also put Work in hours needed to complete this Task (or Feature)!

If you look at the Current Sprint Board:

You will get:

All Features are here, but you can not see which belong to which Sprint. This is another thing that I’m missing here. If you want to move Feature for specific Sprint (which you do) to, for example In Progress  column you can do it via Current Sprint Sheet:

and:

and finally you will get:

If you move it to the Done column you will get:

Notice that this Feature #1 is in Done Column, but it is not marked as completed. To do that you should follow these steps:

and you will get:

Finally, you have five new Reports which can be found here:

• Agile – Task Status:

• Agile – Work Status:

• Sprint Status:

• Current Sprint – Task Status:

• Current Sprint – Work Status:

As you can see, some of them don’t have any data because I didn’t assign resources or work to them, but this is jus an example to show you how those reports look.

To conclude, after all this is great tool for Scrum Projects, but some things have to be improved, and they will in the future, because this is Version 1.0.

Good job Microsoft.

Regards!