Before starting this article let's understand what is Agile and Scrum.

What is Agile

Agile is a Method of project management that is characterized by dividing module in to tasks and tasks into short phases of work and frequent reassessment and adaptation of plans. In other words, Agile is a Time Boxed incremental software development method.

What is Scrum

Scrum is an incremental agile software development framework (Agile Framework).

Agile Scrum Process in Short.
  • Product Backlog: A product owner creates a customer’s wish list and prioritized it and create backlog, called Product Backlog.
  • Sprint Planning: In this meeting team select small part or module from the Top Priority Wish List of Product Backlog and prepare a small task list.
  • Setting Capacity and Sprint: Team has to deliver the tasks in 2 weeks or 4 weeks sprint, here Scrum Master bind tasks with Time and User.
  • Scrum Master’s role: Is to make sure team focused on its goal.
  • End of the sprint: We have completed tasks which we can Release to Client.
  • Sprint review and retrospective: sprint ends with a sprint review and retrospective where Team Inspect and Adopt to become more effective on process.
  • Next Sprint: In the next sprint, the team chooses another Module and Task of the product backlog start working on the next sprint.

What Setup Visual Studio Team Services

Visual Studio Team Services is a services for track work of team, share code and incremental project release. It’s free for up to 5 Members, you can purchase plan as per your need.

Visit this Link and complete the Sign-up process.

After login it will redirect you to Dashboard, here you can create a Project and Team. Create new project by clicking on 'New' from Recent project and teams.

Create your Team Project: From the Process Template you can choose Agile or Scrum Template.

From the Version Control you can select Team foundation Version Control or Git. Enter project name and click on 'Create Project' - Select 'Manage Work'.

Here I have created 2 templates one using Scrum Template and another with Agile Template.

Agile Template

The Basic difference here is some keywords, like here in Scrum we have Columns Like 'New'. 'Approved', 'Committed' and 'Done' and in Agile Template we have 'New', 'Active', 'Resolved' and 'Closed'. Also for the Backlog in Scrum we have 'Sprint 1', 'Sprint 2' Etc. and in Agile we have 'Iteration 1', 'Iteration 2', etc. You can also change and customize this column as per your need. After creating project, Next task is adding Resources or Users, for that follow below steps.

Go to Users Tab - Add User Details and click on 'Send Invitation' Button,

After Creating Users, next step is creating Backlogs of your project. Click on 'New' and add your 'User Story' in Backlog, set your Prioritized list of works.

In your User Story, you can add details of tasks, Acceptance Criteria, Status and Priority, Links and Attachments, as in the following screen.

Backlog have Board, where you can keep track and manage your Project Progress by simply drag and drop Tasks in Column, Edit Tasks, etc.

For Agile Template you can set dates for each Iterations as in the following screen,

You can set Capacity, No. of Days of Your Team members for the respective Iteration or Sprint.

You can check also sprint burndown chart. In any point of time you can check the history of your Task as in the following screenshot. Here you can check who task owner is and who has made changes with date and time.

So, this is the overview of Visual Studio Team Services Project Management Tools.
Summary

Main issues with Traditional Project Management

Why do we need Scrum in the first place?

So friends, what are you waiting for, set your own working rules and be a rule player. Start working smartly using Visual Studio Team Services. We will discuss more features like Query Editor, Graph, etc of Visual Studio Team Services and other tools in next article.

Thank you for reading this article, hope you like it.

Wish you all ‘Happy New Year - 2016’.