Sprints are necessary for agile projects and any good agile development team. The better you are prepared before a sprint, the more likely you will hit your goals you set up for your project. The sprint planning in SCRUM is the event with which the sprint is started. A good Sprint planning defines the content which will be delivered in the sprint and how this is to be implemented. The entire SCRUM team works together in sprint planning. If everything is implemented correctly, this creates an environment in which the team feels motivated and can work successfully. In this blog entry I will describe the sprint planning with the Focused Build Board – a Third-Party-Solution from bsc Solutions. There are more Focused Build Board solutions by external partners available. For more information, please refer to the “Conclusion” of this blog entry.

SCRUM Projects

The Focused Build Board can be used in SAP Solution Manager for sprint planning to implement your Work Items and Work Package for your current release.

Prerequisites for using the Focused Build Board to do the sprint planning is that SCRUM Projects in SAP Solution Manager are created.

Overview of possible SCRUM projects

Further some Work Packages and Work Items which needs to be planned within a sprint should be already created as well. The Work Items needs to be assigned to a development team.

Backlog for sprint planning

During the sprint planning for the next wave the sprint backlog will be created by the scrum team. It includes all the Work Items which needs to be implemented in the next sprints of the wave for the current release. All created Work Items in SAP Solution Manager where no sprint is assigned, are automatically assigned to the backlog of the Focused Build Board.

Backlog for sprint planning

This can be seen in the specific scrum project which is related to the Focused Build project assigned to the Work Package and Work Item.

Sprint planning

The development team are planning together with the SCRUM Master each sprint in the wave according to the backlog. They check, which and how many Work Items can move to which sprint. It is necessary to priorize the Work Items and define story points to see whether it is possible to implement all the selected Work items in time in a specific sprint. That means they have to discuss how may story points can be implemented within a sprint.

After setting up priorities, story points, adding development teams, the Work Items can be moved per drag and drop to a sprint in the Focused Build Board. It is possible as well to move some Work Items from one Sprint to another Sprint afterwards. Or moving a Work Item back to the backlog.

Sprint planning

After all relevant Work Items which needs to be implemented in the wave are assigned to a sprint, the implementation can be started with Focused Build.

The “Board” in the Focused Build Board

The development team can use the “Board” in the Focused Build Board to have an overview of all Work Items of the current sprint. They can check the status of the Work Items, how many story points are assigned to it or which developer and tester are responsible for the Work Item.

Overview of the “Board” in Focused Build Board

It can be seen which type of Work Items are assigned to the sprints – on the one hand, you can see different number ranges and you can see different colours: light blue for Work Items from Type GC, dark blue for Work Items from Type NC.

The arrows represent the priority of the Work Item.

The development team can switch the sprint to see an overview of all Work Items in the other sprints of the wave.

If you have different teams assigned to the SCRUM Project, you can choose whether you want to see the board for a specific development team or for all teams.

In this overview it is possible to move the Work Items per drag and drop to the next status. Of course, some prerequisites have to be full filled for moving the Work Items – e.g. if you want to switch the status from “in development” to “to be tested”, all tasks of the transports assigned to the Work Item (NC) needs to be released. Otherwise the status change per drag and drop is not possible. You can do all the status changes per drag and drop as customised in the status schema.

Monitoring

In the “Monitor” section the development team and the SCRUM Master can use several dashboard of all the sprints in the wave. They have the possibility to track the “Progress”, the “Velocity” or take a look to the “Log” of the sprints. The SCRUM Master can to the Sprint Retrospective in the Monitor as well to summarise whether the sprint planning and sprint executing was successful or what can be done better.

Monitoring of several sprints

Conclusion

With the Focused Build Board you can do a sprint planning for your Work Items in Focused Build to start the implementation of your current release. Furthermore you get a visual overview of your current Work Items like in a real SCRUM Board.

The Focused Build Board is not a SAP Product. It uses the API provided by SAP Focused Build. The providers who offers such a solution using the SAP Focused Build API are:

• CoreALM – Agile SCRUM Board for SAP Solution Manager Focused Build
• bcs Solutions – SCRUM Board Focused Build for SAP Solution Manager