Anyone out there with experience with Agile/Scrum in Workfront?

[cwatson]

I work in the marketing department of a tech company and many departments have made the transition to scrum. There's a good likelihood that we'll be making the transition as well to assist with traffic management. I haven't been able to find many discussions, groups, or communities here at Workfront for organizations that are using WF for Agile methodology. I'd love to engage with a group of people who are using WF for Agile at various levels of experience. Can anyone direct me to one? Is there a way to create such a group here in the WF Customer Portal? I've got tons of questions about customization, translation of scrum concepts to WF's Agile implementation, how best to manage a backlog based around projects as stories rather than tasks as stories, etc. If you're out there, I'd love to hear from you. Thanks, Chris Watson Senior Director, Marketing KVH Industries, Inc.

[VicAl]

Hi Chris, I think this community will have varying levels of Agile experience. So it might be a good start. We have used the Agile functionality in WF for the past 4 years. Though we haven't explored projects as stories, so I won't be much help there. But let me know if I can help in any way.

[MichaelLa4]

Hi Chris, we have run scrum/agile for the past year, needed to move away from the traditional waterfall approach, yet did not really understand what SCRUM was. Loads to learn in a short amount of time. Learn SCRUM principles first, have everyone that is going to partake read this book, Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time, then start slowely, possibly outside of WF. You will soon start asking the key questions of WF on how your teams want to use WF. If I missunderstand and you are already a SCRUM Master and just want to evoke more with WF, then ask away. Your one question about running stories and using projects we have not done, but you could load a task that represents a project and manually update. I have tried to link the two in the past but unable to (wanted to have the task show percentage complete). Hope this helps. Michael Laing Atlas Copco Drilling Solutions LLC

[MirandaRa1]

#ERROR!

[ConnieSu]

Let me know if you need assistance getting a group started, this is something we've been exploring as well. @Aubrey Hayes or @Stephanie Hartsog - is this something you could help us setup in the Community?

[AmyPa]

Agreed, I would love to follow a community to get tips and opinions on this! Amy Pasqualucci Olympus OSSA

[cwatson]

Hi Michael, Our company has been employing scrum for our technical engineering teams for several years and I've gone through training conducted by the team from Scrum, Inc. We now want to try to integrate scrum within our marketing department (aka agile marketing sort of) but I'm trying to figure out is how to adapt Workfront's Agile structure to the way our teams use scrum here and how we've been taught to use it. For example, the scrum instructors were insistent that we not worry about story point equalling hours but rather level of effort. That way, if creating a new brochure takes X amount of effort but we get more efficient at it with future brochures, we haven't changed our level of effort but rather our velocity. Workfront's Agile structure appears to be based around the concept of story points = hours. Thanks for the suggestion about stories and the backlog with projects. Chris Chris Watson KVH Industries, Inc.

[cwatson]

I would love to get a group set up for focused discussions on this. Also, I'll be attending (and speaking at) Leap 2019 in May. I'll be checking out the various Agile sessions but would love to get together with other folks are are looking at or are already using the Agile tools in Workfront to get some good conversations started. Chris Watson KVH Industries, Inc.

[cwatson]

I'd love to hear about your experience. Were you an established Workfront user with waterfall-style projects prior to conversion to Agile? Chris Watson KVH Industries, Inc.

[KevinO_]

Thanks for opening this thread. I previously used JIRA in a prior org, and I am now tinkering around WF Agile. Creating a backlog and the agile view is nice, along with issues pulling directly from request queue, but getting this setup isn't as intuitive as it is in JIRA. I'd be interested in more dedicated discussions around this as I consider refining this for our marketing operations team, and beyond to other teams. Kevin O'Neill Amazon Web Services

[WayneEl]

Count me in. We are not currently an Agile shop, but the management claims that is our future. I come from an Agile background and would love to hear others' experiences using Workfront for Agile development. Wayne Ellyson OH-DAS

[JasonHa1]

The timing of this discussion couldn't be better. I'm literally trying to figure this out right now. The rest of our organization uses JIRA but our department prefers Workfront. Therefore, we are considering adding the Fusion service to integrate with JIRA (among other integrations) to help connect the Workfront agile stories with JIRA. Jason Hanson Thomson Reuters - Corporate

[cwatson]

Our engineers use Jira also but it's not a good solution for the marketing team here. Workfront is fully embedded in our marketing operations and if we can adapt its Agile tools to meet our needs, that will go a long way toward helping with a transition to Agile marketing. I've submitted a ticket to Customer Support about getting an Agile/Scrum special interests group established here in Communities. Chris Watson KVH Industries, Inc.

[maxn17999001]

Hi Chris, We've been using the scrum functionality for some time and the main issue we've had is we couldn't work seamlessly with the rest of the organisation who use waterfall as if we brought in any tasks that were assigned to us screwed their project timings as the task took on the iteration timings. So to mitigate this we had to create our own stories which is inefficient and created its own problems, so we recently took the decision to switch to kanban. Our team are not getting on with this as it has very limited functionality compared to scrum such as not being able to reorder tasks on the kanban board or change story estimates without navigating to the project or moving the story back to the backlog to name but a few challenges. Scrum isn't perfect by no means but it's far superior than the kanban functionality bizarrely. I'd like to hear if anyone has had better success than us or any advise as to how to collaborate better with our waterfall colleagues. Kind regards, Max Nyirenda HomeServe

[MichaelLa4]

Hi Max, mixing waterfall and SCRUM did not work for us either. I created SCRUM project(s) independant of the main (Waterfall) project, then fitted a task in the main project and manually updated this tast at every SCRUM. The waterfall team does not really understand WF unlike the SCRUM teams, which is why we seperated. The main project now has visibility of the SCRUM projects. Not ideal and I am sure not the design intent with WF, but it is working for us. I am thinking the next approach is to work with the waterfall teams to adopt Kanban as a break from the old waterfall, once that is in place and people understand that way of working, the relationship with SCRUM should be better. hope this helps? Michael Laing Atlas Copco Drilling Solutions LLC

[MirandaRa1]

Hi Chris, I have replied inline, but actually the bottom part of this message is directed also at @Michael Laing & @Max Nyirenda - thanks! So, we are on a totally new implementation for both styles, as well as for multiple teams (marketing mostly for - creative & dev & reviewers), with different levels of experience of working with this kind of PM tool. I am also learning agile methdology. We have moved one team to a kanban team and straight away experienced an odd issue that I still don't have an answer too. I am a sys admin. When I make my Home Team the kanban agile team - i lose the tab / right to see a queue setup on a project queue. I also dont see the custom form anymore assoc to the queue,under 'new request'. I only spotted this when i could see another sys admin in the same team had the same issue - removed myself from the Home Team and the permissions came back - i am still in the agile team, but now it is as a secondary team and not my Home Team. Workfront support were baffled by this also. I have been through all the literature, but don't recall a setting associated to this? We really need to be able to work with the standard project management view WF offers and integrate this with agile, for the future... these points are of interest to me: 1) Our team are not getting on with this as it has very limited functionality compared to scrum such as not being able to reorder tasks on the kanban board or change story estimates without navigating to the project or moving the story back to the backlog to name but a few challenges. - I need to practice more with this to experience / understand the limitations better. 2) I am thinking the next approach is to work with the waterfall teams to adopt Kanban as a break from the old waterfall. - I really like this idea, as a few marketing teams use trello to schedule their work anyway - how would you go about implementing the change? Miranda Rais GVC

[ErinRe]

Hi all, We have varying levels of agile happening in our IT department. We have used Workfront to manage our scrum process and we also have some teams that have used Jira or Azure DevOps. There are certainly advantages and drawbacks that we've found with all tools. A lot of the challenges we seem to have with the tool are around simple UI things (ie opening a "card" and seeing all of the details without loading a new page and clicking across tabs). The other biggest learning is that the why we want to be agile, and the process of how we are agile are both so important before trying to make the tool do things. A transition to agile can be a touchy subject depending on the players involved it seems like. We are still learning and we've been at it for about four years. I am SO interested in being part of an agile group with you all, so count me in! I have actually been accepted to speak at LEAP Dallas on the topic of Agile and so Im doing a lot of research on the forum and in the idea exchange to make sure Im hitting the points that seem relevant and helpful. Thanks! Erin ERIN REED National Heritage Academies, Inc.

[glenncat]

Hi Chris, thanks for starting the conversation around this. We too are moving towards implementing Agile for some of our groups. I'd like to join if you get something going with a user group and at Leap. Let me know if you'd like me to help with the Leap part, by getting a conversation going on that with our Enterprise Exec, although I'm guessing if you're speaking you have much deeper connections than I do. Cathy Glenn TRTA Marketing

[maxn17999001]

Hi Michael, Yes the two don't mix well and we had to duplicate tasks like yourselves. I'd get them to test kanban before they adopt it as the functionality just isn't where scrum is. It is likely that we'll move back to scrum and accept that we'll have to duplicate tasks when collaborating with the waterfall users as our team just don't like kanban in WF. Kind regards, Max Nyirenda HomeServe

[maxn17999001]

Hi Miranda, Regarding point 1, this is one of the limitations of kanban on WF, you can reorder tasks on the backlog, but this doesn't carry through to the backlog column on the kanban board. It's supposed to put them in alphabetical order on the kanban board view, but we feel it's more random, so we have to revert to the backlog view to see the priority of jobs. Regarding point 2, I would start with a test team before rolling it out as you may be able to iron out any issues before your full roll out. This will give you time to adjust any reports that will break when you make the switch. Max Nyirenda HomeServe

[maxn17999001]

Hi @Miranda Rais , WF have confirmed that there will be some Kanban improvements in the upcoming release "https://support.workfront.com/hc/en-us/articles/360011746714-2019-1-Release-Activity-Overview">2019.1 : Add tasks and issues to a Kanban board from any task list or report. Previously, you could add tasks to the Kanban board from the backlog only. You could not add issues. Filter the Kanban board by individual users on the team. For more information, see ""https://support.workfront.com/hc/en-us/articles/115001547114">Using the Kanban Board. " View and manage issues on the Kanban Backlog. For more information, see ""https://support.workfront.com/hc/en-us/articles/115001547114">Using the Kanban Board ". Previously, you could not add or manage issues on a Kanban board. The last bullet is brilliant for us as we will be able to set the priority on the backlog and this will be mirrored on the backlog column on the Kanban board. These are incremental improvements, but it looks like WF are finally giving Kanban some much needed attention. You can see these changes in your preview environment. Max Nyirenda HomeServe