Agile in Daily Life

I hope you have got a basic idea regarding how Scrum works. Now, let’s look at a way of incorporating the Agile Methodology using Scrum into our daily routines.

There are various open-source project management tools available and any of them can be used to support Scrum and Agile. Some of the tools are listed below:

• OpenProject
• Gitlab (Community Edition)
• Odoo
• Tuleap

Apart from the tools mentioned above, there are some free offerings provided by Jira and Microsoft Azure DevOps. All the tools mentioned here have their own advantages and disadvantages, and which one we use solely depends upon personal preference. I personally prefer using Azure DevOps as I am more familiar with its offerings.

Azure DevOps Offering

Azure DevOps with its paid offerings also provides a basic plan which is free for up to five users. Apart from this it also offers one Microsoft-hosted job and one self-hosted job. Also, Azure DevOps is completely free for open-source projects. This makes it an excellent candidate for managing small and open-source projects.

Using Azure DevOps in our Daily Routine

Let’s begin with some initial setup before we start using Azure DevOps…

Creating a new Organization and Project

• Goto Microsoft Azure DevOps and sign in with an existing account. If we do not have an account yet, we can quickly signup for a new account or use an existing Github account to signup.
• Once we have logged in, we will be redirected to create a new organization as shown in the below image. Now, we need to enter a name for our organization and select a region to host our projects. Once done enter the captcha and click on continue.

• After creating the organization we will be redirected to the Azure DevOps Portal. Here, at the top right corner, we have a button to create a new project. Click on the button and it will open a window as shown below. Enter the name of the project as 2022-Planner, select it as a public project and click on create. Once done a new project will be added to our organization.

Delivery Plan, Sprints, Feature Work Items, and Tasks

As soon as a new project is created we will be redirected to the project summary from where we can begin creating work items.

By default, Azure DevOps provides us with a default team with respect to the name of the project and creates three iterations/sprints. This can be seen by going into Boards > Sprints, where we can also create new sprints. Before we create work items, features, or delivery plans let’s look at how each of them will help us in managing our daily tasks.

Delivery Plan

A Delivery Plan is a timeline within which a team delivers the complete project. It could be anywhere between multiple weeks to several months depending on the amount of work to be done for completing a project. Analogous to managing our daily tasks this will be the timeline in which our long-term goal must be completed. I prefer using Delivery Plans to set a timeline in order to specify the duration in which a goal is to be reached.

A delivery plan contains one or more features and can be created through Boards > Delivery Plan.

Sprint

A sprint is a time-boxed period during which specific work has to be completed and made ready for review. Each sprint has a specific duration and begins with a planning meeting. All the work to be done is analyzed and calculated which is carried out throughout the sprint. Analogous to using it for our daily routine, we can divide our long-term goals into short terms goals and divide them to be completed into multiple sprints.

Generally, I prefer to keep a week as the duration for a sprint. I keep Sunday to analyze the work done in the previous sprint (week) and accordingly calculate the work to be done in the next sprint (week).

Feature

It refers to the feature that is to be delivered within the Delivery Plan. Analogous to managing daily tasks, it will refer to a long-term goal such as certification, course completion, etc that we want to complete within the specified timeline set through Delivery Plan. A feature is added within a Delivery Plan in order to track its progress.

A Feature can be created by going to Boards > Work Item > New Work Item > Select Feature

Once created a feature will look as below:

Work Item

In order to develop a feature, a long-term task is divided into several small work items which are worked on within a sprint. It is also referred to as User Story. Incomplete work items are rolled over to another sprint. It also helps us to track the progress made on the current feature. Analogous to managing our daily routine, work items are helpful in dividing a longer task into simpler ones and taking over them in sprints. Thus, it will be helpful to keep track of the work completed which in turn will contribute to the completion of the long-term goal.

All the work items have an associated feature added as a parent in order to correctly track each work item with respect to a feature. A work item can be created by going to Sprint > New Work Item. Once we create a work item it will look as below:

Tasks

Tasks are similar to work items but are created within a work item to act as a quick description of the work carried out in completion of the work item.

For example,

If we want to make Tea following will be our Work Item and Tasks associated with it:

Work Item: Make Tea

Tasks:

• Put the tea and pour hot water into the cup
• Brew Tea
• Adding sugar according to taste

Tasks can be created by opening a Work Item and going to Related links at the bottom right. Then, we need to select New Item. This will enter a new popup where we need to enter the link type as a Child and work item type as Task.

Once our task is created it will be linked to our Work Item in the Related Links sections. A Task will look as below:

Dashboard and Taskboard

Dashboards are customizable interactive signboards that provide real-time information regarding a project or a team. We can use a Dashboard to get an overview of our daily progress. I personally use a Dashboard to quickly get an overview of the progress I have made during my day and how far I am from reaching my goal.

There are different widgets that Azure DevOps provides us in order to create a Dashboard. A Dashboard can be created by going into Overview > Dashboard. Once created it will look as below:

Taskboard provides a visualization of the flow and status of each sprint task. With it, we can focus on the status of backlog items and work assigned to everyone. In simple words, Taskboard shows us an overview of progress with respect to the work assigned in the Sprint to a team member. We can use Taskboard to get a quick overview of our Work Items and how far we are from completing our daily tasks.

Taskboards are updated automatically according to the status of the Work Items. In Azure DevOps Taskboard is simply referred to as Boards. It can be viewed by going to Boards > Boards.

Summary

In this blog, I have presented how to incorporate Agile methodology in daily life to manage our tasks efficiently. If you like the idea and the content then do make it in practice. Please comment if you have any doubts and do share with your friends and family.

Also, don’t forget to give your reactions!