I’ve been getting by with just Excel and a large cork board for tracking the one Scrum project I use. Still as a tool junkie and a hater of Excel in general I finally got around to trying out ScrumWorks.
So so far:
- Download and install cycle is pretty short and it just worked including the WebStart client. I’m running it on my work laptop, and since I don’t like to weigh a team down updating tasks, I’m maintaining the Sprint backlog and tasks.
- Entry of tasks and backlog items is fairly easy, though you have to right click a lot for add new. Much better than XPlanner’s multiple click interface.
- The ability to move backlog items in and out of a Sprint and to drag and drop the order of items is really nice.
- It calculates everything on real time which is a pain. Since I was entering data on a Sprint that was 8 days in, I have to wait until tomorrow to even get a data point since you can’t effectively go back in time. I guess they assume you’ll start the project with the tool, not try it out midway.
- If its going to replace Excel I probably need some better looking export reports, or I’m going to have to try screen captures.
I’ll give it to at least the end of the current Sprint as a test.