07 5 / 2010

Scrum Template for iWork Numbers

I’ve been a huge fan of iWork for Mac.  Keynote totally owns Powerpoint.  It’s so much nicer laying out text on Pages than on Word without all the complications of Quark and Indesign.  Numbers, while it no where as robust as excel… but I don’t need it to be, and having nice visual design and live charts is so much more important to me.  If you don’t have to share your documents with the outside world much… it’s a great solution.

I really can’t wait to get a iPad since it has iWork on there.  Not full version, but good enough to go on presentation and the type of stuff I would use it for.  One of the potential things I really see myself using it for is project management and brainstorming since iPad should be pretty sweet for visuals and touch interactive.  So the last couple days, I’ve been playing around and designing some for iWork Numbers templates; one for Scrum Project Management.

Scrum is the current ‘it’ for software developers since it so much easier to do than GANT waterfall styled project management systems.  Here is a great guide to Scrum if you wanted to try it out.  The great thing about it is that it keeps people accountable to their tasks and is flexible to changes to the project.  Simplified Scrum works really well for event planning, home improvement projects, marketing campaigns just any type of project you can think of.  And yes the method is very scalable.  Below is sample of Bachelor party we’re hoping to sort out.

key to ‘task’ cards in image

# - # represents task number or what it is

@ - @ represents person doing task

  • - * denotes time to do it or completed date

star burst - number inside red star burst represents priority points or can represent number of hours to complete task.

text box - should describe task; should begin with verb: “call Y”, “Reserve for X”, etc.

Rather than look at boring spreadsheets to track project, it would be much more easier to drag different ‘task’ index cards to different ‘status’ columns by touch finger, from there you can tell who is working on what (current), what is already done (done), what needs to be done (backlog), and what can just marinate (ice box).

I also did a scrum burn down chart which is nice to see how fast is everybody working or how much the team is lagging.  I still need to add a sheet to track meetings for the project.  Which should say:

  1. what the team did from last meeting to current meeting,
  2. what the team will do from current day to the next meeting, and
  3. what is holding team back from completing any tasks. 

These 3 questions really forces everybody to be accountable for their tasks and responsibilities.

Message me if you want the template….


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