The idea for Scrum for Team System happened while Rob Grigg and I were at the Team System TAP in Redmond, in September 2004. I had just finished my first major project using Scrum and was fully possessed with the zeal of the newly converted. At that point Team Foundation Server contained two methodology templates – MSF for Agile Software Development and eXtreme Programming (since replaced by MSF for CMMI Process Improvement) – I was sat in one of the presentation of MSF Agile, the Work Item Tracking System and integration with Excel and MS Project and I remember the presenter saying something along the lines of “one of the main problems is getting estimates - as a Project Manager, it’s your duty to chase your developers to give you detailed estimates – otherwise your reports will not be accurate. The only problem is getting estimates out of your developers [much laughter]”. And I thought “Well, we don’t have that problem in Scrum because at a minimum, we update our estimates every day at the Daily Stand Up meeting – this problem seems to be a fault with the process, not with the tools – hang on a moment – why don’t we write a Scrum Methodology Template?”
It's been a long road from then until now and many thanks has to go to all those involved who helped get Scrum for Team System to the 1.0 release;
from Conchango (past and present) - Rob Grigg, Steve Garnett, James Simmonds, Ian Shimmings, Colin Bird, Susie Kablean, Mark Lines-Davies, Alex Osman, Mike Speight, Chris Pearce and a big extra special thanks to Stuart Preston for the incredible magic he weaved setting up environments (from early customer previews to last minute escrow builds), and getting everything ready for installation, deployment and release.
From Microsoft Technology Centre UK – David Brown and Paul Appleby who helped us brainstorm and kick the tires of Team Foundation Server to see which of our ideas were realistically possible and of course Simon Davies for being our "go to guy".
Ken Schwaber; not only for helping to create such a great project management framework but also agreeing to let us film him for the multimedia guidance.
And last but not least - a big thank you to the 150 beta testers who helped us discover bugs and helped us improve the product before this release.
During the development of this product we have always tried to keep the Agile Manifesto pledge of “Individuals and interactions over processes and tools” at the front of our minds. There has been much talk of late about the role of tools within Scrum or other Agile Methodologies; every Scrum project I’ve seen has used Excel to drive the Product Backlog, Sprint Backlog and associated burndown charts and every project has used a source control system, automated testing tools and a bug tracking system – Team System offers all these tools in one package and thus reduces the friction involved – so your team can concentrate more effort on developing potentially shippable code and less time trying to get the build tools and bug tracking system to work as expected.
There are a couple of new features in this release that even our beta testers have not yet seen – the completed process guidance and multimedia guidance by Ken Schwaber himself. We decided to host this outside of Team Foundation Server because with all the multimedia guidance it weights in a little over 100mb (although we give you the option of downloading the complete package), this does have the added advantage that we can continue to update the guidance without the end user having to perform an in-place upgrade, it also means that people who don’t run their projects in the .NET / Team Foundation Server world can still access our guidance.
So take a look at the new site – http://scrumforteamsystem.com for more information. We hope that the written guidance, along with Ken’s multimedia overviews will give teams new to Scrum all the information they need to run an efficient Scrum project and hopefully some new insights and learning’s for teams already practicing Scrum.
Now that Scrum for Team System v 1.0 has been released - you can take the following steps:
A few blog posts have already appeared this morning about the release - I can't convey how big a slap on the back these sorts of comments are - this one in particular, from one of our Beta Testers, Bill Simser:
"I’ve been testing their Scrum for Team System product for awhile now and now they’ve released it as freeware...The add-in is pretty slick and covers all the major aspects of Scrum and is a much better implementation (IMHO) over something like MSF for Agile (that comes OOTB with TFS)"
Scrum for Team System, free as in beer
We have been dog fooding Scrum for Team System on my current project and one of the adaptations that several of the team members have made is installing TeamLook, another 3rd party add-in for Team System by Personify Design that allows you to manage your Work Item Types within Outlook. When I asked one of them why they preferred using TeamLook, I got the reply “Well whenever I ask for clarifications about a particular Sprint Backlog Item from our Product Owner, I usually get the reply in an email – so it’s much easier to copy the notes from the email and paste them into the Sprint Backlog Item, without having to leave Outlook”.
I don’t have TeamLook installed – I guess after using Team Explorer for almost 2 years I’m set in my ways – but then again maybe it’s time for me to inspect and adapt.