Scrum is a time-tested and popular agile framework used by many businesses to achieve their project management goals. However, like most frameworks, Scrum is only effective if you follow its guidelines.
In Scrum project management, for instance, large projects are broken down into small tasks that are completed within short, time-boxed periods known as sprints. The framework also demands regular sprint reviews to ensure the project team is on track.
But all of this can be too much to handle on your own—a perfect time for Scrum tools to come to your rescue. Scrum tools are a type of project management software that offer features, such as sprint tracking dashboards, that are specifically designed to help Scrum teams improve productivity.
In this blog, we discuss how Scrum software facilitates project management. We’ve also listed three Scrum tools that are popular among agile teams. But before we dive in, let’s first understand what Scrum tools are and how they benefit your business.
What is a Scrum tool?
A Scrum tool is an agile project management solution that helps businesses implement the Scrum methodology of managing projects. Scrum project management software offers capabilities such as sprint planning dashboards, reporting tools, and project analytics to track the progress of projects.
It also provides reporting dashboards and shared workspaces that facilitate team collaboration and help employees visualize the amount of work required for each project iteration.
What are the benefits of Scrum tools?
Scrum project management tools help an agile team in three key ways:
- Better visibility into resource productivity and project progress: With features such as task boards, daily Scrum meets, and sprint reviews, project members and stakeholders can track real-time resource availability and project completion rates.
- Improved project planning: Continuous stakeholder feedback throughout the project lifecycle allows the development team to better plan tasks and predict how much work they can complete by a specific date.
- Reduced chances of project failure: The Scrum methodology works by identifying issues as development progresses rather than after the completion of the entire project. This helps save time and allows team members to make changes immediately to ensure project success.
3 popular Scrum tools
In this section, we’ve listed (alphabetically) three popular Scrum project management tools that can help agile teams structure and improve their workflows. These products have been selected from Google’s search engine results page (SERP). To read our complete selection methodology, click here.
GitHub is a project management and version control tool designed for software development teams. It supports the Scrum framework and allows project managers to break down large projects into small Github tasks or user stories. It also lets them create team milestones and track their progress.
Key features:
- Labels for organizing and prioritizing tasks
- A dashboard for tracking bugs and issues
- Reports for monitoring project performance
Pricing info:
GitHub’s paid plan starts at $4 per user per month with a 2GB storage limit. The tool also offers a forever free plan with a 500MB storage limit.
monday.com is a project management solution for Scrum teams. It offers prebuilt Scrum project templates for planning sprints, tracking bugs, and creating feature backlogs. It also offers a Scrum board that allows a project manager to plan, assign, and track tasks and subtasks.
Key features:
- Project planning with Gantt charts
- Reports for tracking project progress
- A shared activity dashboard for project collaboration
Pricing info:
monday.com’s paid plan starts at $24 per month for three users (billed annually). It offers Android and iOS apps and 200+ project templates. The tool also has a 14-day trial period.
Targetprocess is an agile project management tool that helps plan, track, and deliver Scrum projects. It offers a Scrum dashboard for planning monthly sprints as well as product backlog and sprint backlog dashboards for monitoring project progress.
Key features:
- A project planning and tracking dashboard
- Burndown charts for monitoring project progress
- An activity dashboard for team collaboration
Pricing info:
Not available in the public domain.
What’s next?
In this blog, we’ve featured three Scrum tools that are popular with agile teams. To select the one that’s right for your business, follow these steps:
- Check if your Scrum team is looking for any specific features. Ensure those features are available in the tool you’ve shortlisted.
- Visit our Scrum software page to read user reviews of your shortlisted Scrum project management tool and get an in-depth understanding of its performance, features, user-friendliness, etc.
Methodology
Products have been selected based on Google SERP as accessed on Dec. 29, 2020. Tools that ranked higher in the SERP were given preference and further judged on the following criteria until the top three qualifying products were derived:
- Average rating of 4.5 out of 5 (as of Nov. 2, 2020)
- A minimum of 20 user reviews on Software advice (as of Nov. 2, 2020)
- At least 3 out of the 5 core features of Scrum software: Scrum task dashboard, product backlog management, issues and bug tracking, sprint management, and Scrum metrics
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