The Web development industry, along with the software development world as a whole, is undergoing a significant transition in project management styles. The traditional waterfall methods — where projects are strictly confined to outdated specs and constantly over budget — are being replaced with methodologies collectively known as Agile software development, a faster paced, iterative style of developing and delivering web-based projects.

1. Planning, Tracking and Managing Agile Web
Development Sprints using Scrum and Inter vals
Agile, Scrum and the Web Design and Development Industry
The Web development industry, along with
the software development world as a
whole, is undergoing a significant
transition in project management styles.
The traditional waterfall methods — where
projects are strictly confined to outdated
specs and constantly over budget — are
being replaced with methodologies
collectively known as Agile software
development, a faster paced, iterative
style of developing and delivering web-
based projects.

2. Agile software development allows us web developers to start with a
basic spec and a general direction, then work through the project in
iterations — involving the client in each step and keeping time, budget
and expectations within reason — until the client is satisfied with the
final deliverable. Agile gives the web Development Team and the client
more ownership and involvement, and provides a more collaborative
process that results in a higher quality, portfolio-worthy project.

3. There are different “brands” of Agile — Lean,
Scrum and Extreme Programming (XP) being
the most common. Each one is a little different
then the next and designed to be flexible so it
can be adapted to your workflow. The Intervals
team has adapted many aspects of the Scrum
brand of Agile to our project management
workflow. Our flagship product, Intervals, is an
online time, task and project management
system that is very well-suited to doing Scrum
web development. In fact, our team uses
Intervals to manage the development process
for Intervals (kind of like that movie, Inception,
but different).

4. Planning, Tracking and Managing the Scrum
Process using Inter vals
The manner in which we use Intervals for
Scrum development can easily be
replicated by any web design and
development agency that wants to use
Intervals for doing Agile project
management. Here are some guidelines
on how to apply the Scrum development
method to the next web project you
manage with Intervals (Create your own
free account to follow along.) We’re going
to assume you already have a general
understanding of Agile development and
Scrum, and that you have a few
candidates in mind for the Product
Owner and Scrum Master.

5. Roles and Responsibilities
Product Owner
Scrum Master
Development Team

6. Product Owner
The Product Owner will be one of two people, either the customer/client
when working with outside companies, or the person in charge of
product development when working on an internal product, such as
online company software. In other words, they are the stakeholder, the
go-to person when you have questions about a story.

7. Scrum Master
The Scrum Master is often times a member of the Development Team
and operates as a buffer, protecting the Development Team and
keeping them focused on completing the sprint. The Scrum master will
be the person implementing the methodologies outlined in this post.

8. Development Team
The Development Team is comprised of your designers, developers and
any other team members involved in the sprint. Their job is to do the
actual work, the brainstorming, writing, creating, comping, coding,
documenting, and testing, of the stories. They are ultimately
responsible for delivering a completed sprint.

9. Grooming the Sprint using Tasks and Milestones
Before the sprint planning begins, it is a good idea to have groomed the
stories that will be candidates for the sprint. Grooming a story simply
means filling in the task summary with a brief description of what is
required to complete the story. If that isn’t possible, be sure to make
time during the sprint planning to groom the stories.

10. In Intervals, a task is the equivalent of a story. The task summary
contains the contents of the story and the task estimate is the number
of points. In this example, we are equating points with hours because
we will be tracking time against the task during the sprint. For our
stories, we typically use the numbers 0, 1, 2, 4, 8, 24, 40, 100 for our
point system.

11. You will also need to have created a milestone, which is the equivalent
of a sprint. The milestone simply needs an owner and a due date to get
started. The owner can be the Product Owner or Scrum Master. The
milestone does not need to be detailed at this time. We just need it so
we have a place to put tasks during the sprint planning, when the
details can be finalized.

12. In Intervals, a task is the equivalent of a story. The task summary
contains the contents of the story and the task estimate is the number
of points. In this example, we are equating points with hours because
we will be tracking time against the task during the sprint. For our
stories, we typically use the numbers 0, 1, 2, 4, 8, 24, 40, 100 for our
point system.

13. The Sprint Planning Meeting
The Scrum master will be leading the sprint planning meeting, but
participation from the entire team is necessary for planning a
successful sprint. The goal is to go through the tasks in the product
backlog and move them into this sprint until we’ve reached our
estimated velocity. Our team should know our velocity beforehand, a
number of points we know we are capable of completing during one
sprint. If you don’t know your exact velocity, then guess. We’ll track this
during the sprint and adjust accordingly.

14. Adding stories to the sprint using tasks and milestones.

15. During the sprint planning, refer to the milestone view for this sprint. It
will tell us how many points (total hours of task estimates) we have
allotted to this sprint. We want to keep that number below or equal to
our velocity. In addition to the task estimates, the “Graphs” tab on the
milestone will reveal several graphs and charts useful for the sprint
planning process — in particular, the Kanban-esque chart showing
number of tasks by status and the number of tasks per assignee chart.

16. Right-click on any story in the sprint to assign it
to a member of the development team

17. In Scrum, the entire team has collective ownership of the tasks in the
sprint. We set the task owner as the Product Owner or Scrum Master to
keep them engaged in a guiding role, and set the assignee as the Web
designer or developer responsible for completing the story. The stories
can be assigned during the sprint planning meeting, or, members of the
Development Team can assign stories to themselves when they start
working on them. If a story needs to have multiple owners or assignees,
this can be done by selecting them using the multiple selection icon.
Assigning multiple people to a task is a useful feature for teams that
practice pair programming.

18. Tracking the Sprint
Once the sprint has begun, typically as soon as the sprint planning
meeting has adjourned, the Scrum Master will use the milestone to
track sprint progress and manage the Development Team. In Scrum,
the Development Team should be self-organizing and managing
themselves, however, the Scrum Master will need to be the one guiding
this collective team management process. This requires the Scrum
Master to periodically check the status of the sprint and guide the
Development Team — removing impediments, enforcing rules, limiting
distractions and keeping stories from bloating. The milestone offers a
few invaluable data points for tracking the progress of a sprint.

19. Interpreting the Kanban-esque Char t
The Kanban chart is a useful task management tool. It tells us which
tasks are completed, which tasks haven’t started yet and which tasks
are stuck or need attention. Intervals has a chart available in the
milestone that was designed in the spirit of Kanban. The chart shows
us how many tasks are currently set to each status. The goal is to move
all of our tasks from the left to the right, from “open” to “closed”.

20. The sprint is considered done once all of the stories in the milestone
have been closed. Some of the statuses they might be set to in the
interim are “in progress,” “under review,” and “needs assistance” — it’s
really up to you what statuses to create and what order to put them in.

21. Calculating Current Velocity
Knowing our Development Team’s current velocity helps us determine
how much of the sprint is completed and how much is left. We can look
at velocity in two ways. The most common way to calculate velocity is to
look at the number of points completed. This method is good in that it
tells us what percentage of the sprint is done.

22. The second way to calculate velocity is to have the Development Team
tracking their time, so we can compare the actual hours against the
estimated number of hours, or points. Now we have a way to compare
estimated effort against actual effort on each story, so we know exactly
where we are at in the sprint and what to expect going forward.

23. Estimate the Probability of a Successful Sprint
One area that we diverge from traditional Scrum practices is time
tracking. At Pelago, time tracking has always been a component in our
estimating process. Historical time tracking data gives us the ability to
create accurate estimates for the sprint planning process.

24. If we’ve allocated 160 hours to a sprint, and we are tracking our time,
we’ll have a pretty good idea of how much work is left in a sprint based
on the number of hours remaining. And from that data, we’ll know
whether or not we are going to have the sprint completed on time. If the
number of hours left exceeds the number of hours available, we know
we need to either take some stories out of the sprint or move the
completion date. Time tracking gives us the information we need to
make these types of decisions as earlier in the sprint.

25. Managing the Sprint
Successful sprints require constant communication and daily check-
ups. One tool for managing this process is the daily standup, a fifteen
minute meeting designed to get the Development Team together to
discuss what they are working on and to communicate any
impediments blocking their progress. These meetings give the
Development Team an opportunity to check in with one another and
give the Scrum Master the information necessary to keep the sprint on
schedule. Keep the daily standup short and simple so it doesn’t
become one of the very impediments you are trying to prevent.

26. The Scrum Master should be managing the sprint by monitoring the
milestone and the Development Team’s activity. Using online task
management software, like Intervals, will give the Scrum Master the
tools they need to evaluate the current sprint and communicate with
the Development Team.

27. In addition to the software, the Scrum Master will manage the sprint by
maintaining a steady flow of feedback between the Product Owner and
Development Team, continually working alongside the Development
Team as a member of that team, and keeping the team focused on
their tasks by removing any impediments and distractions that threaten
the overall success of the sprint.

28. Check out the Inter vals blog for more ar ticles…
The Inter vals Blog
A collection of useful tips, tales and opinions based on decades of
collective experience designing and developing web sites and web-
based applications.
www.myinter vals.com/blog
Photo Credits: VFS Digital Design, 1, 2, Alex Barth