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Scrum tools aren’t just for agile software development offices, even though that’s where Scrum originated. The Scrum framework can be used in many production settings—from marketing agencies to construction firms. In fact, a lot of the best project management software out there includes some functionality for following a Scrum framework, incorporating items like backlogs and sprint planning features.
Most agile teams use some form of the scrum methodology to plan projects and get things done. In this article, we go over several of the best scrum software options to help you plan meetings. Find the best Scrum Software for your organization. Compare top ERP Software systems with customer reviews, pricing and free demos.
- Because Scrum is related to agile, there’s quite a bit of crossover between software described as “agile tools” and as “Scrum tools”. However, in general agile project management tools will enable a wider scope of agile development functions, not just Scrum-related ones.
- Jan 07, 2019 Scrum this. And agile that. Or should we kanban it altogether??? Those are the questions every agile team wants to answer! We get it, leading an agile project management team isn’t the easiest job. Between jumping from your daily scrum to your next sprint, it can be hard to focus on the work.
- Scrum involves a set of practices that are used in the management of agile projects, mainly for software development. Scrum Alliance is a leading organization for those who are using Scrum practices in their projects. There are 3 popular certifications for the Agile Scrum professionals that are offered by Scrum Alliance – Certified Scrum.
- The software-centric business model is quickly becoming pervasive in every industry, not just IT. As Jeff Gothelf, co-author of Lean UX, put it, “Software is eating the world.” 1 Since the publication of the Agile Manifesto in 2001, the project management (PM) climate has experienced a gradual.
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This Scrum tools review includes the following tools, with comparisons of their features, pricing, integrations, and pros & cons:
- Clarizen – https://www.clarizen.com/
- ProjectManager.com – https://www.projectmanager.com/
- monday.com – https://monday.com/
- GitScrum – https://site.gitscrum.com/
- Yodiz – https://www.yodiz.com/
- ScrumDo – https://www.scrumdo.com/
- Quickscrum – https://www.quickscrum.com/
- Scrumwise – https://www.scrumwise.com/
- Axosoft – https://www.axosoft.com/
- Vivify Scrum – https://www.vivifyscrum.com/
What Does a Scrum Tool Do?
Scrum provides a set framework for producing a product, be it an email campaign, software or consumer product. All Scrum tools are based off of a similar framework of basic Scrum elements. If you’re unfamiliar with Scrum, have a look at our guide 9 methodologies made simple. Because Scrum is related to agile, there’s quite a bit of crossover between software described as “agile tools” and as “Scrum tools”. However, in general agile project management tools will enable a wider scope of agile development functions, not just Scrum-related ones.
Scrum software is designed to facilitate the Scrum framework, encouraging collaboration, transparency, and efficiency among team members. In fact, Scrum software can prove beneficial for almost any organization, as it facilitates communication, organizes workload, and helps members to plan for multiple iterations.
The Basic Parts of Scrum Methodology And Software
A critical element of any Scrum project management software is the Backlog. Like a whiteboard or sticky notes; this is where you list all the tasks and requirements for your final product. It is vital that you prioritize your backlog according to the urgency and importance of each task.
Another key element of Scrum apps is the Product Owner. This is the person who owns the discussion on which features are included or not as they manage the business and functional expectations for the product.
The Scrum framework divides time into predetermined chunks for completing each task from the backlog, known as Sprints. The graphical representation of a sprint is called a Burndown Chart. These are helpful in visualizing progress in order to stay on track.
Daily Scrums are a meeting for all the team members to discuss their progress and bring up any issues that need attention. Most Scrum tools have scheduling or meeting features to easily plan and coordinate Daily Scrums.
Each Sprint ends with a Retrospective, a time-boxed meeting where the team reviews the Sprint and plans for future improvements.
10 of the Best Scrum Tools to Increase Your Team’s Productivity
Score:
- 10
Clarizen – https://www.clarizen.com/
Clarizen is an enterprise grade professional services automation software solution, designed to speed up the way you do business – integrating work, content and process tightly together to enable more efficient working. Clarizen’s real focus is making projects happen faster with timesaving workflows. Clarizen is a great project management tool if you have lots of repeatable projects that require repeatable processes as the workflow automation is pretty flexible and powerful.
It covers off the PPM basics of task lists, schedules, docs and files, communications and reporting without breaking a sweat. Clarizen’s project planning tools are a powerful mix of functionality across the planning, executing and controlling of a project. Within planning are project workflows, a full featured resource, schedule and task planning tools, with project and portfolio optimization so that you can easily and quickly align projects to business objectives.
For project execution, Clarizen enables everyone on the team to be aligned with a dashboard that enables teams to work better together and see how their contribution fits into the bigger picture – from the project timeline and milestones, to budget, project discussions, and sharing documents.
Instead of being obligated to make educated guesses, project managers can make accurate data-based decisions that align project selection and investment with big picture priorities. Changing tasks and schedules takes a few clicks, and project managers can run hypothetical scenarios to proactively see the impact of resource changes before they go live, and alert end users via their personal dashboard of any changes to their workload. Because resource scheduling is built-in, Clarizen delivers real-time insights into all available resources, schedules and tasks.
Clarizen has some really powerful integration options out the box that are worth considering if you’re have other business-critical systems already in place. You can combine the power of Clarizen with other enterprise tools including Jira, SharePoint, Tableau, Salesforce and Intaact, among others with subscription to an App integration so you don’t have to play around with the API’s yourself. As well as the enterprise tool integrations possible, Clarizen has an App marketplace to add additional functionality into the system including helpful add-ons like active directory sync, Excel reporting integration and priority automation – many of which are free.
Clarizen offers a free trial and costs from $60/user/month.
Score: 10
Score:
- 9.6
ProjectManager.com – https://www.projectmanager.com/
ProjectManager.com isn’t a specialized scrum tool per se, but as an award-winning PM software used by big name brands like NASA, Volvo, and Ralph Lauren, it’s worth considering. And while it’s used in enterprises, ProjectManager.com’s basic plan can have as few as 5 users, so it’s still a sensible solution for small teams.
So, as I mentioned, ProjectManager.com isn’t a specialized scrum tool—but I include it here because it has some really useful features that a team adhering to a Scrum methodology could do well to take advantage of. You’ll find kanban boards with real-time dashboards that help you visualize your work, and you can switch seamlessly switch between different task and project views to help visualize work, too. The notifications is basic but useful—you can set up automated alerts to stay on top of due or overdue tasks.
ProjectManager.com integrations include native integrations with GoogleApps like Drive, Gmail, Calendar, etc. as well as Microsoft Office and Microsoft Project. For all other integrations, you can use Zapier to sync ProjectManager.com with other tools.
Pricing for ProjectManager.com starts at $15/user/month, with their basic “Personal” plan requiring a minimum of 5 users. They also offer a 30-day free trial.
Summary of ProjectManager.com:
- Product Backlog, Sprint and Burndown charts: So-so
- Visualization: Pass
- Reports: Pass
- Notifications: Pass
- Integration (mobile and other PM tools): Pass
Score: 9.6
Score:
- 9.2
monday.com – https://monday.com/
monday.com is a great for managing scrum teams and projects. The platform has robust time tracking capabilities and customizable notifications & automations, that allows you to focus on what’s important. You can create, visualize and share your roadmap to keep everyone in sync.
Backlogs, dependencies and sprint planning are available as well in a very intuitive interface.
Backlogs are easy to create and use. You can filter or sort them according to any column you choose. With many different columns, monday.com helps teams plan their sprints in a completely customizable interface, which helps workflow creation fit to the team’s needs. monday.com offer multiple view from which you can create burndown charts and analyze your work, such as kanban, timeline, files, among many others.
While monday.com doesn’t offer the full range of Scrum reporting features like a burndown chart, it does offer some simple reports and charts to get an overview of sprint progress, capacity, and effort. To learn about the different features that help analyze performance, you can go to their detailed explanation here.
monday.com’s integrations include project management apps like Slack, Google Drive, Gmail, Google Calendar, Jira, GitHub, Trello, Dropbox, Typeform and many more, accessible via Zapier.
monday.com costs from $17/month for two users. The company’s customer support is available 24/7 by phone or email.
Summary of monday.com:
- Product Backlog, Sprint and Burndown charts: Pass
- Visualization: Pass
- Reports: Fail
- Notifications: Pass
- Integration (mobile and other PM tools): Pass
Score: 9.2
Score:
- 9,5
- free trial
- free version for up to 3 users
- $12/month (10 users)
GitScrum – https://site.gitscrum.com/
While it’s a new tool in the project management market, GitScrum conveniently offers a few extra features that many tools lack. For example, a time-tracking feature for logging hours and a bug tracking feature that allows you to pull bug reports to check the current status of any bugs.
GitScrum’s suite of useful Scrum features include both kanban boards and non-kanban task management tools, a project calendar, changelog, checklists, customizable workflows, various reporting (burndown charts, etc), and sprint planning features. Teams can upload/share files, communicate through discussion forums and receive email notifications to stay updated on tasks. You can also customize your GitScrum emails to include your company logo if you’d like to send out client-facing updates.
GitScrum integrations include Dropbox, Slack, GitHub, BitBucket, Asana, Trello, GitLab, and Discord.
GitScrum costs from $12/month for up to 10 users. It’s free for up to 3 users.
Summary of GitScrum:
- Product Backlog, Sprint and Burndown charts: Pass
- Visualization: Pass
- Reports: Pass
- Notifications: Pass
- Integration (mobile and other PM tools): Pass
Score: 9.5
GitScrum’s Crazily Discounted, Exclusive Lifetime Deal
For a limited time, GitScrum is offering steeply discounted version of their software—get lifetime access with no recurring fees for an insanely low price:
- Freelancer version: one-time payment of $59
- Professional version: one-time payment of $119
- Business version: one-time payment of $299
This is just too good to pass up—get the exclusive Lifetime Deal while it lasts!
Score:
- 10
- freemium version
- free 30-day trial of paid plan
- from $3/user/month
Yodiz – https://www.yodiz.com/
This tool simply checks all the boxes. Yodiz is powerful, user-friendly, and versatile enough to suit various use cases. First off, Yodiz is hands-down one of the best scrum tools for you if you’re on a very small team (3 members or less), as Yodiz’ free version includes 100% of the app’s functionality and features as long as you’ve only got 3 users. Likewise, Yodiz is a completely free scrum tool for nonprofits, open source initiatives, NGOs, and universities. The makers of Yodiz really walk their talk when it comes to providing community access to the power of agile development.
This tool is also well-designed for teams who need something powerful, but minimal. For these cases, they offer a basic issue tracker version at $3/month/user with a few well-selected, essential functions for release management, reporting bugs, viewing reports, and managing tasks and workflow. Then again, even for larger, for-profit teams, Yodiz delivers great value for a below average price at $5/user/month. And it’s not like you miss out on features—this scrum tool offers customizable dashboards, gantt charts, timesheets, customizable board layouts, sprint boards, release boards, backlog analytics, epics and features management (and more). The reporting features and configurable views (for example, view stories by epic, release, size, etc) make this tool one of the more information-rich scrum tool out there.
Yodiz integrates with dozens of apps and has versions for both iOS and Android.
Yodiz costs from $3/user/month. It’s offers a full-featured free version for up to 3 users and/or for nonprofits, NGOs, universities, and open source initiatives.
Summary of Yodiz:
- Product Backlog, Sprint and Burndown charts: Pass
- Visualization: Pass
- Reports: Pass
- Notifications: Pass
- Integration (mobile and other PM tools): Pass
Score: 10
Score:
- 10
ScrumDo – https://www.scrumdo.com/
Once you’ve gotten over the unavoidable urge to shout, “Scooby-dooby-doo!”, you’ll put down your Scooby snacks and see that ScrumDo offers more than a trip down memory lane. Instead of trying to offer everything, ScrumDo takes the approach of specializing in doing one thing well: scrum. This tool is not for well-established teams who want to dabble in scrum or add a little bit of scrum here and there. ScrumDo is best-suited for two types of users: for small, new teams who want to start out with a fully agile framework, and for die-hard agile teams who want to dive deep into the agile development process—and stay there.
As well, if you’re looking to strengthen your team’s adherence to scrum methods, this is an especially good choice—the company offers a Remote Coaching service to help teams use the scrum tools and processes most effectively. ScrumDo is an especially good fit if you plan to scale your agile projects, as this tool is built—and priced—for this exact case. Moving forward, the pricing aligns with the realities of a scaling team, increasing in increments every 10 users.
ScrumDo offers all of the essential agile features (boards, communication, alerts, backlogs, etc). The makers of this tool have been selective and thoughtful developing features and functions that best enable agile frameworks—the tool can be modified suit several agile frameworks, including Scrum, Kanban, Scrumban, and Scaled Agile Framework® (SAFe®).The reporting and dashboard features are practical, if perhaps not as beautiful as other tools in a graphical sense.
The integration library is minimal, but well-rounded—Slack, HipChat, FlowDock, and GitHub.
ScrumDo costs from $8.99/month for up to 10 users.
Summary of ScrumDo:
- Product Backlog, Sprint and Burndown charts: Pass
- Visualization: Pass
- Reports: Pass
- Notifications: Pass
- Integration (mobile and other PM tools): Pass
Score: 10
Score:
- 9.0
Quickscrum – https://www.quickscrum.com
This scrum app isn’t about the features—it’s about people, how they use the app, and how their use of scrum fits into the organization at large. The training and education offerings are really the biggest value that Quickscrum provides. They claim to have the largest scrum community, spanning a worldwide network of coaches, certified scrum professionals, developers, product owners, scrum masters, and more. They offer a free membership where people can access resources created by their community, including scrum video tutorials and articles. Additionally, they offer agile transformation, coaching, and training services (for an additional price). For this reason, Quickscrum is a good tool for any team or organization who needs scrum training.
Quickscrum does offer an intuitive tool with all of the essentials, including a drag-and-drop interface, kanban and scrum boards, backlog grooming, and tools for running retrospectives and stand-ups. The reporting features are comprehensive, covering anything from velocity charts to sprint health, work in progress reports, sprint effort variance, and more.
This scrum app is more user-friendly than most, but it is lacking in integrations (just GitHub). As such, it’s a good choice for users who have never used a scrum tool before, as well as users with few existing apps that they’d need to quickly integrate.
Quickscrum costs $3/user/month.
Summary of Quickscrum:
- Product Backlog, Sprint and Burndown charts: Pass
- Visualization: Pass
- Reports: Pass
- Notifications: Pass
- Integration (mobile and other PM tools): Fail
Score: 9.0
Score:
- 9.5
Scrumwise – https://www.scrumwise.com/
Scrumwise has been around since 2009, and has built out a very intuitive, user-friendly Scrum master tool over the past decade. It’s dedicated its attention to being a simple, superb agile project management software. Because of this, Scrumwise is a good choice for teams who want a focused scrum tool without having to dig through (or pay for) additional project/business management features.
Scrumwise offers a full set of features for task, time, backlog, and sprint management, The tool has a simple interface with drag-and-drop kanban boards and easy-to-digest visualizations in their burndown charts. This tool has a selective approach to features and attempts to get rid of complexities, making it a good choice for small- to mid-size teams who don’t need anything too robust. Even the pricing of this tool is simple, offering a single, full version at $7.50/month/user.
You can export all your data for easy ad-hoc analysis and reporting (simple copy and paste, exporting to CSV or XML files), and the API enables one- and two-way syncs with other tools. Although this scrum app has minimal out-of-the-box integration with other platforms, it does run on both IOS and Android phones.
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Scrumwise costs from $7.50/user/month.
Summary of Scrumwise:
- Product Backlog, Sprint and Burndown charts: Pass
- Visualization: Pass
- Reports: Pass
- Notifications: Pass
- Integration (mobile and other PM tools): So-so
Score: 9.5
Score:
- 9.8
Axosoft – https://www.axosoft.com/
While some tools like Scrumwise (above) focus on distilling the complexities of an agile project environment within a simplified interface, Axosoft’s approach is to simply embrace complexity. This scrum tool gives structure and organization to the many components of scrum project management, providing an information-rich display of relevant scrum project data. Some tools give you about as much granular control as a carnival bumper car—Axosoft is more like a pilot’s cockpit (granted, a user-friendly one).
In terms of pricing, Axosoft stays true to its highly configurable nature. Pricing is more granular than other tools, determined with a widget that factors in your team size, whether you use a hosted or installed version, what type of support you require.
One feature that makes this tool especially useful is their release planner, which allow users to view capacity at the sprint, team, and team member level. It also offers a helpful ranking tool for prioritizing tasks, a tool for building custom workflows, and a “Daily Scrum Mode” for zooming into the day’s progress, identifying obstacles and giving updates. Of course, it also has your scrum software fundamentals like drag-and-drop boards, kanban-style cards, burndown charts, flow charts, etc.
Axosoft has a growing list of dozens of integrations (including Zapier, GitHub, SalesForce, Slack, Trello, GitLab, Bitbucket, and many more) and offers a mobile app as well.
Axosoft costs from $25/month for 5 users.
Summary of Axosoft:
- Product Backlog, Sprint and Burndown charts: Pass
- Visualization: Pass
- Reports: Pass
- Notifications: Pass
- Integration (mobile and other PM tools): Pass
Score: 9.8
Score:
- 10
Vivify Scrum – https://www.vivifyscrum.com/
Vivify Scrum is a well-balanced tool with useful scrum features and an appealing UI. This cloud-based app offers a clean, clutter-free interface that can display all projects on a single page. Many scrum tools claim to make project management seamless, but Vivify’s intuitive flow and quick navigation actually deliver that seamless feeling. And at $8/user/month, it offers a wider array of business functions than you’d expect, including invoicing and a files management package. This is a low-risk tool for large organizations to try out, as it’s free for an unlimited number of users, limited only in functionality. If detailed and highly configurable reporting and stats are critical for you, however, there are better tools out there.
If you’re looking for free scrum tools, Vivify’s free version isn’t bad—it offers the choice between scrum and kanban boards and enables users to build custom workflows, manage tasks, and view basic reports like burndown charts. It also allows unlimited users, boards, and items, in addition to 1 external integration. It lacks access to some useful statistics features, but even so, the functions it does provide makes it a more well-rounded tool than many of the free scrum tool versions out there.
Vivify Scrum has a decent number of integrations, including Slack, Trello, GitHub, BitBucket, Travis, Pivotal Tracker, and Jira. And they also offer both an iOS and Android app.
Vivify Scrum costs from $1/user/month and offers a 14-day trial along with a free version for an unlimited number of users. They have a convenient widget on their pricing page to help easily calculate the cost of the tool for teams of various sizes.
Summary of Vivify Scrum:
- Product Backlog, Sprint and Burndown charts: Pass
- Visualization: Pass
- Reports: So-so
- Notifications: Pass
- Integration (mobile and other PM tools): Pass
Score: 10
Summary Of The Best Scrum Tools
It’s easy to be overwhelmed by all the Scrum tools out there. Here’s simple table summarizing basic info about the tools described in this article. View Scrum tool pricing and availability of free trials to make a quick side-by-side comparison.
Software | Overview | Free Option | Price | Score | Site |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Read Clarizen features & functionality | Free 30-day trial | From $60/user/month | 10 | ||
Read ProjectManager.com features & functionality | Free 30-day trial | From $15/user/month | 9.6 | ||
Read monday.com features & functionality | Free 14-day trial | From $17/month for 2 users | 9.2 | ||
GitScrum | Read GitScrum features & functionality | Free trial Free version for up to 3 users | $12/month (10 users) | 9.5 | |
Read Yodiz features & functionality | Freemium version Free 30-day trial of paid plan | From $3/user/month | 10 | ||
Read ScrumDo features & functionality | Free 7-day trial | $8.99/month for up to 10 users | 10 | ||
Read Quickscrum features & functionality | Free 14-day trial | From $3/user/month | 9 | ||
Read Scrumwise features & functionality | Free 30-day trial | From $7.50/user/month | 9.5 | ||
Read Axosoft features & functionality | Free 14-day trial | From $25/month for 5 users | 9.8 | ||
Read Vivify Scrum features & functionality | Freemium version | From $8/user/month | 10 |
We’ve also included an explanation of our selection criteria, so you can understand how and why we chose these Scrum tools.
Other Scrum Tools
I haven’t had the time to review these properly, but here’s a few more Scrum tools you can check out:
- Targetprocess – https://www.targetprocess.com/
- Scrumdesk – https://www.scrumdesk.com/
- Zoho Sprints – https://www.zoho.com/sprints/
- FunRetro (a Retrospectives planning tool) – https://funretro.io/
- SprintGround (for software and web development) – https://www.sprintground.com/
- VersionOne (agile PM and DevOps) – https://www.versionone.com/
- Orangescrum – https://www.orangescrum.com/
- SwiftKanban – https://www.digite.com/swiftkanban/
Want Help Narrowing Down the Options?
This tool is pretty useful. We’ve partnered with Crozdesk to give you access to their “Software Finder”.
If you input some of the details about your project and the features you’re looking for in a project management tool, it will generate a list of tools that match your preferences. You provide your email, and they send over a nice PDF guide with a summary of your best matches.
Scrum Tool Selection Criteria
Every organization is different—a marketing agency cannot necessarily use the same Scrum tools that a construction crew uses. However, there are certain elements that you should expect to see in any Scrum tool. We’ve identified these critical components for our evaluation:
1. Product Backlog
An organized backlog makes future planning and allocation of resources easy to manage. An effective backlog should include ample storage, and must enable prioritization of tasks.
2. Sprints
This is the heart of any scrum tool. Sprints are repeated, predetermined periods of time for completing sets of tasks from the backlog (generally from 2 to 4 weeks).
3. Burndown Charts
These are graphical representations of progress that provide insight into any delays and factors causing them. The horizontal axis of the burndown chart depicts Sprints and the vertical axis shows the remaining work. A burndown chart is your basic visualization feature in any Scrum tool; many Scrum tools also include several additional types of charts for measuring progress (burnup, cumulative flow, etc).
4. Visualization
The backlog should provide visibility to each member of the team and should provide a convenient interface for the development team to manage tasks. The best Scrum tools have visualization of tasks and progress displayed on a real-time dashboard.
5. Reports & Notifications
Some teams don’t need elaborate, custom reports, but any good Scrum tool should include some basic reporting features for gauging progress. Supernatural season 7 episode 4. Likewise, notifications are essential for detecting bugs, managing deadlines, remembering to tune into Daily Scrums, etc. A lot of the free scrum software out there won’t include many reporting features; most often you’ll need to use a paid plan to access advanced reporting features.
6. Integrations
Because it’s 2018, most Scrum software has a few of their own PM tools and apps in addition to integrations to third party apps and mobile-compatible apps. Especially if you don’t have a programmer in house, it’s a good idea to stick to a Scrum software that easily integrates with other systems without the need to dig into an API.
7. Price
We’ve included some basic pricing info to help you evaluate the best scrum tool for your use case. Getting beyond the freemium versions, Scrum tool prices range from about $3/user/month to $25/user/month.
How To Choose The Best Scrum Tool For Your Team
Here’s a list of key questions to ask yourself in order to choose the right Scrum tool for your team:
- What do you need it for? Do you primarily need a task management tool (more basic), or do you need it for storing documentation or creating client-facing reports (more advanced)?
- What is the size of your team? Very small teams are lucky to find several Scrum tools that gives a full range of features for free. If you’re planning to scale, take this into account—how much will it cost to upgrade?
- Which tools should it integrate with? At the very least, it probably needs to integrate with your calendar and document folders. Also consider whether you’ll want a tool that integrates with your existing development applications, CRM, time-tracking apps, document management systems, resource management apps, and other BPM tools.
- How will it fit into your workflow and how easy is it to learn and set-up? If you’re new to Scrum tools, choose a tool with a large training resource library, online training, or even Scrum coaching as an add-on.
- What’s your tool budget? Keep in mind future scaling requirements.
What Do You Think?
Have you ever used any of these Scrum tools? Which one do you like best and why? Comment and share with the DPM community below.
Scrum methods can help your project run more smoothly and enable you to get things done quickly and effectively. Project management software often includes features that can help you implement them, so we’re looking at Scrum and project management tools. We’ll try to figure out which platforms are best for agile teams to use.
We’ll start by taking a look at what Scrum is and how it works, then look at the features found in project management tools and how you can use them with it. Some, such as Jira, have dedicated Scrum views, some have Scrum templates and many can be useful despite not being explicitly designed for the methodology.
What Is Scrum?
The term “scrum” comes from rugby, but was first applied to development by Hirokata Takeuchi and Ikujiro Nonaka. Many others contributed ideas, and in 2009, The Scrum Guide was published, providing the methodology with an official set of guidelines.
Scrum methodology is typically associated with software development, but it doesn’t have to be. It involves dividing work into sprints, which last from two weeks to a month. Sprints have a goal, which might be to get certain features ready in a software product.
There are regular meetings, called daily scrums, that are limited to 15 minutes and require developers answer three questions: what did they finish yesterday, what will they do today and is there anything preventing them or their team reaching the sprint goal.
There’s also a review and retrospective at the end of each sprint. They allow the team to see what was done and what wasn’t, decide what to do next and figure out process improvements.
Roles in Scrum
Scrum is designed for small teams. There are three roles in Scrum, one of which is the team. The team organizes itself and figures out how it can meet sprint goals.
The product owner is the one who sets the vision. Often a boss or client, they’re the one who decides what the team should create and what the priorities are. They’re on hand to answer questions from the team, but they don’t get involved with the details.
The scrum master is there to remove obstacles getting in the way of the team’s goals. They can work closely with the product owner to help figure out what to prioritize and what suitable goals would be.
You may think the product owner and scrum master sound like your CEO and manager, and you’d kind of be right. In Scrum, though, the roles are formalized and their involvement is limited. The product owner lets people know what they want, the scrum master solves problems for the team and the team gets things done.
That can be key to allowing the development team to do their jobs without being pushed in the wrong direction by people who, despite having good intentions, don’t know much about development.
Scrum is great for developers, who tend to be independent and work best when left to their own devices. It gives just the right amount of guidance, so they know what to do, but leaves them to do what they think is needed to achieve goals.
What Can Scrum Do for You?
Scrum allows for tasks to be set and guidance to be provided to developers, while giving developers the space to solve problems independently. Developers tend to be better at doing those things than their clients and often their managers too, so doing it that way results in a better product that’s delivered faster.
Though Scrum is widely associated with development, it’s becoming more popular elsewhere and can be used in all sorts of industries.
Examples of Scrum Tools
- Jira
- Trello
- ProWorkFlow
- Basecamp
Best Scrum Software
Some of the best project management software has features pitched at developers, and some is designed for use with Scrum.
Full-on Scrum: Jira
Agile And Scrum Tools
Jira is one of the best platforms for developers and has many features designed for them. It’s based around issues rather than tasks.
It has dedicated Scrum boards and kanban boards because it supports both methodologies. It also has “epics” and “stories,” which are its way of categorizing tasks. It describes them as “agile artefacts.”
Jira integrates with HipChat, a popular communication tool for developers, so you can use it for Scrum meetings, too.
We were impressed by its feature set. It’s also good value, especially for large teams or those looking to self-host. Read about it in our Jira review.
Kanban: Trello
We know kanban boards and Scrum boards aren’t the same, but a kanban tool can be a great way to arrange projects internally for your team. It can also be kept private to the team itself.
Trello lets you create as many boards as you like, so you can have one for every sprint. Read more about it in our Trello review and take a look at our Trello beginner’s guide after that.
That said, you can set Trello to work with Scrum, as shown on this page. Trello is a versatile tool that has many “power-ups” to help you get more out of it.
Trello cards can represent tasks, issues or bugs. You can add information and attachments to them. Attachment size is limited, though. If you need a lot of space, read our best cloud storage guide.
You’ll find a few more kanban tools in our how to use a kanban board guide.
Role Definition: ProWorkflow
Roles are crucial in Scrum, so it’s important to be able to define them in project management software. In addition to being able to name roles, it’s useful to control what the different types of users can and can’t do.
ProWorkflow is good at role assignment, letting you name roles and control what they can and can’t do. That means, for example, you can prevent the scrum master and product owner from assigning tasks to help prevent micromanagement.
In addition to letting you assign roles, ProWorkflow features a return on investment calculator that shows how the time it saves you translates into cash. It also has time tracking features, so it’s a useful tool if you want to keep an eye on costs.
ProWorkflow also includes an agile board on its app store, which you can use for free. Read our ProWorkflow review to learn more about the platform.
Meetings: Basecamp
If you love meetings as much as we do, you’ll love Basecamp, which lets you keep all your communications in one place. That allows you to post as needed, without everyone having to present at the same time, which most project management tools offer.
Scrum Agile Process
In Scrum, though, regular meetings are needed. Basecamp’s “campfires” allow the team to chat in real time, making them perfect for that. Read more about it in our Basecamp review.
Final Thoughts
If you’re looking for tools to help you implement Scrum methodology, there are plenty of choices. We’ve compared some of these platforms with others in our face-off articles. Take a look at Trello vs. Jira or Wrike vs. Basecamp to see how they did.
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All the tools we’ve mentioned are free or have a free trial, so try them all and see which fits your team best. There’s plenty of other software available, so browse our project management software reviews to see what you can find.
If you’ve used any of these tools to help implement Scrum methodology, please share your thoughts in the comments. Thanks for reading.