How to Scrum with Project for the Web.

Project for The Web has a couple different areas: Grid, Board, and Timeline. A question I hear often is, “Can we manage Agile projects in Project for the Web?” To be more specific, “Can we manage Scrum based projects?” The answer is yes, of course—in a limited way, but still well enough!

I will walk you through the steps. Let’s say that we have a Project called Scrum.

 

To assign Resources to the project, I have to create a Group. In this case, we’ll also call it “Scrum.”

There are two Backlogs: Product Backlog and Sprint Backlog. I will begin by creating features.

 

As you can see, this is my Product Backlog.

Now I will create Sprint Backlog boards:

 

As you can see I have four Buckets: Backlog, Sprint 1, Sprint 2, and Sprint 3.

Features will never have Resources assigned to them., Tasks, on the other hand, always will!

Let’s say that I have Sprint Planning. Let’s break Feature 1 and Feature 2 into Tasks. Those tasks will become a part of Sprint 1. I will insert Task 1 as shown below.

 

 

Repeating the above steps, I should end up with multiple tasks.

 

Now I have two possibilities. If I switch to the Board view, I’ll see what follows:

 

I can move Feature 1 (along with Tasks 1, 2, and 3 as they belong to this Feature) to Sprint 1. I can do the same for Feature 2 with associated Tasks 4, 5, 6, and 7 as shown:

 

You don’t see Tasks 6 and 7 because they didn’t fit my screen.

Another option is to make Features as placeholders for your Summary Tasks as shown here:

 

The result will be:

 

When I jump to the Board view I will show the following:

 

As you can see, Feature 1 is gone! This is because Summary Tasks are never showed on any board—only Subtasks.

Now let’s look at Kanban Board (or in this case, Group by Progress):

 

Let’s say that John takes Task 1. I will assign him to that task, and I will move it to the In progress bucket as shown:

 

As you can see, when I assigned John to the task, I also marked Task 1 as 25% complete. The total work to be done is estimated at 16 hours. Since Task 1 is 25% completed, Project will put 4 hours in the Completed [Effort] field, and 12 hours in Remaining, as shown:

 

We all know that in Scrum theory there should be no dependencies between tasks, but, in real life, they exist. Let’s say that Task 1 is something like Install operating system to the Laptop, and Task 2 is Install MS PROJECT 2019 to the Laptop. These two tasks are dependent on each other. I will put dependency between them as shown below:

 

The result will be:

 

Once Task 1 is finished, it will shown as such.

 

I can see it in Sprint 1’s bucket, also.

 

By default, all completed Tasks are hidden, but I can see them if I choose to.

To conclude, you CAN manage Scrum with Project for the Web in very efficient ways. What you cannot do is calculate Capacity and/or Velocity. If you need those two, I suggest you move to the Azure DevOps, TFS, or something similar.

Learn more by attending my on-demand webinar on the topic. In the meantime, have you used Project for the Web for an Agile or Scrum based project? How has it worked for you? Leave your comment below.

 

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Written by Nenad Trajkovski
Nenad Trajkovski, born in Zagreb in 1963, is an accomplished professional with a background in Electrical Engineering. With expertise in enterprise systems (ERP) development and implementation, he has served diverse sectors including banking, casinos, automotive, wholesale, and oil industries. Nenad excels in business process management, IT, and financial accounting. Currently, Nenad is a seasoned consultant and Project Manager, specializing in business systems implementation. He is also a respected trainer for Project Management and Risk Management at the Microsoft Innovation Center in Varaždin. Nenad's speaking engagements have earned him recognition, including being named the best speaker at WinDays08 and ranking among the top speakers at various Microsoft conferences. Nenad holds multiple certifications including Certified Accountant, PMP, PMI – RMP, MCP, MCTS – Microsoft Project 2010, and MCT.
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