General Agile/SCRUM questions....

[JohnSe1]

We have a team that is piloting Workfront's Agile Scrum features (coming from Jira...) after a few weeks many on the team are still comparing WF to Jira and it's not the same obviously. We have all taken the Agile course, which is good but lacking some "advanced" topics. - Grooming seems difficult in the backlog for Workfront. In that we can't seem to break down a story into tasks prior to moving a story into an iteration. Where you can add subtasks. Note - if you break a story into multiple stories via the backlog utility - once moved into the Iteration those "tasks" are grouped under the story so you can't drag them over into the board. As you can if you create the subtask via the iteration board. And if you "groom" in the actual Project (outside of backlog) via traditional Parent and child tasks - this doesn't cary over into the iteration. As it seems the project and iteration are considered to be two unique components with very little interaction. - Remaining stories/tasks not completed in the iteration. When a Sprint I mean iteration is completed and you have items that were not started or uncomplete, they don't populate the the new iteration once it starts. Is that an option or do they need to be moved and if so what is the best practice for doing so? Thanks in advance! John Seitz ESPN - Workfront System Admin

[EricLu2]

John – I have found it best to only use the Agile storyboard to manage stories and create sub-stories. Playing with the underlying project plan waterfall-style has proven to be a disappointment on every occasion. That is my first recommendation. Second, I regularly break stories down into substories using the Storyboard. The original story becomes a parent, as it were, and then I just move the substories through the stages. Nope, WorkFront doesn't automatically move stories from the backlog of an iteration to another. The iterations are disconnected and standalone, as far as I can tell. I don't think that is a bad thing, really, because the product manager should be evaluating the contents of each release/iteration and not just letting the contents be defaulted. If no one is actively managing the theme or content of an iteration/release, then yes, I can see why auto-population of the next iteration would be convenient. Not sure any of that helps. Best wishes, really. Eric

[VicAl]

Hi John, I agree with Eric as usual. I'll add a little bit as well. You can do the grooming and creation of subtasks in all the ways you mentioned. While it's true projects and iterations are two separate entities, you can still create your tasks and subtasks in either place. The end result will be the same. It's the assignment of the Agile Team that causes a Task or Sub Task to appear in the Backlog (and eventually the Iteration). So the Backlog or Iteration View will only display the Task (whether it's a Parent or Subtask) if the task is assigned to that Team . That's what makes it show up in that Backlog View. So you can break it down in the project if you wish, it'll be the same affect. I believe Eric is referring to the Storyboard view for a project, which I agree isn't useful (at least not for us). But creating subtasks or sub-stories is all the same result if you assign to the Agile Team. Procedurally what I'd recommend is to just open the Task (via the Backlog or Iteration view depending on whether you want those sub tasks to be in the Iteration), and go to the Sub Task tab and create your subtasks that way, remembering to assign them to the Team. Then they'll show up either in your Backlog or your Iteration (depending on where you started the process). And I also created a Backlog View that contains the Parent Task name so we can see which stories are related to a larger story (Parent). Regarding the remaining tasks that didn't get completed in the iteration, what I do is create the next iteration, then click on the list view of the old iteration and bulk select the incomplete tasks and do a bulk Move to the new iteration. You can get to that list view of the Iteration by clicking on the Iteration name/link (see attached). Then you'll have a view that you can also change like any other if you wanted to see more information. Hope that helps. Vic Alejandro, PMP, CSM | IT | Sr. IT Project Manager Denver Water | t: (303-628-7262) | c: (303-319-6473) "http://www.denverwater.org/"> http://www.denverwater.org INTEGRITY | VISION | PASSION | EXCELLENCE | RESPECT

[JohnSe1]

THANK YOU BOTH! For some odd reason we weren't assigning the subtasks to the agile team - only the parent. As you pointed out that was the culprit! The way WF handles Agile is a bit clumsy but picking up some of its oddities that might be cool in the future. Again thank you John JohnSeitz ESPN

[MaryPie]

I see you have about 4 years using WF in place of Jira.  Do you have any new insights?