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Nobody who is using scrum with Clarizen is willing to give suggestions?
We have just started with Clarizen and we run multiple scrum teams each with tasks from several customer projects. In fact, Clarizen was one of the only tools that was able to do this well.
Now, we want to set it up with all artefacts, RBL, team board, burndown, etc. I have installed the app and got the board enabled. However, I have some questions for best practice:
(BTW, can you please make the text editor field a bit bigger in the forum? The iframe definition is too small for the editor in width and I'd like a height of at least 200px)
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Nobody who is using scrum with Clarizen is willing to give suggestions?
Sorry Peter, we are discussing this internally with our best Scrum-master and will get back to you later today. Those are a lot of questions! =)
Sorry for being impatient - I am just so excited to get started properly with Clarizen :-)
Thanks for your patience, I can at least start by giving you some of the answers:
Now, we want to set it up with all artefacts, RBL, team board, burndown, etc. I have installed the app and got the board enabled. However, I have some questions for best practice:
Josh: You could use milestones and assign people as resources to that milestone, but they will have very limited editing permissions. In the future we are planning a feature that will allow you to easily assign multiple managers to work items (without having to utilize the current hierarchical permissions).
Josh: Work is really designed to be used as an estimate, so I think this will work out perfectly… especially if you are using Remaining Effort and Timesheets. You even have a “Work Variance” field that will give you the difference between your Work and the Actual Effort. Resources are not able to change the work field without managerial permissions, so you do not have to worry about this field being modified by another other than a manager, project manager, or super-user. I would also make sure your projects are set to “Fixed Work” as opposed to “Fixed Duration.” If you are curious about the differences between the two or how to set this up, I would recommend hopping on either our Q&A Forums or our Power User Training webinar over at http://webinars.clarizen.com.
Josh: The one in the properties section will launch on the overall project while the one in the work plan will run on the selected work item. For example, if you wanted to open up a team board only for a single sprint, or you just wanted to look at the backlog, you could do this by selecting that object in the Work plan and using Utilities >> Team Board. The one on top will always open for the entire project.
(BTW, can you please make the text editor field a bit bigger in the forum? The iframe definition is too small for the editor in width and I'd like a height of at least 200px)
Josh: I completely agree! I believe this is related to a Zendesk bug, will re-escalate this.
Josh: You could use milestones and assign people as resources to that milestone, but they will have very limited editing permissions. In the future we are planning a feature that will allow you to easily assign multiple managers to work items (without having to utilize the current hierarchical permissions).
Peter: But although I assign them as resouces to a milestone, since they cannot navigate to it (click on it/have it show up in their views [or even navigate/click on it in the project path all at the top beneath the tasks names]), they cannot open the Team board for all the tasks in the sprint since the Team board shows tasks "below" your current WI. So, as I see it, the Milestone idea (which would be the natural way of doing it IMO), is impossible with Team Member licenses. Unless I am missing something in your reply.
Josh: Work is really designed to be used as an estimate, so I think this will work out perfectly… especially if you are using Remaining Effort and Timesheets. You even have a “Work Variance” field that will give you the difference between your Work and the Actual Effort. Resources are not able to change the work field without managerial permissions, so you do not have to worry about this field being modified by another other than a manager, project manager, or super-user.
Peter: However, if we plan to let developers break down user stories into tasks (which I guess is the normal way of doing it), they need to be WI managers for the users stories in which case they can change Work. I'd like to show them some reminder of what the original estimate for the user story was. We can use the budgeted work for this but it is not used for any calculations or rolled up.
Thank you for your anwers.
A few additional answers:
Josh: You should assign whomever may need to move that task in the SCRUM meeting (the person moving the task needs to have a role). If you have one person that is in charge for moving all of these tasks as part of your daily SCRUM then that person should be a project manager or manager in the project or a super user.
Josh: What we recommend is setting the start date to be the start of the sprint and the due date to be the end of the sprint. That way if you are below the ideal burndown line in the burndown chart, you know the tasks will be done by the end of the sprint.
Josh: Which RW field are you referring to? The Remaining Effort should be filled by the team to indicate their remaining work and this does roll up.
As for the team member licenses, I see your point now. Perhaps it might be worth it to upgrade those to full? The cost difference is marginal but there is a lot more functionality and flexibility in those licenses.
Regarding Budgeted Work, we can make this a field that is used in calculations. We have a very robust customization engine and you can create your own rollup-fields, formulaic fields, and workflows (ex: automatic email every time something goes over budget sent to the PM). The Advanced Q&A is the best place to get help with adding these fields into your account and we should be able to accommodate just about any scenario you can think of.
Hi Josh
Thanks for your answers. A couple of comments:
Thanks again for the answers which were pretty much as expected.