Agile Sharepoint development by 21apps and Andrew Woodward MVP

Being an advocate of SharePoint as an application platform I looked long and hard for a decent implementation of a Scrum and have always been found wanting.  I have seen simple examples where any power user could set things up but found the lack of any Burndown charts meant you lost probably the most important part of Scrum – the visibility.

I have found that VersionOne is one of the best products on the market, although it has a lot of options which tends to put off new teams.

For those that use Team Foundation Server your probably going to head towards the Scrum for Team System developed by Conchango.  I’ve not used this in anger so am unable to comment on how well it works however this solution is not really a SharePoint specific solution as it requires you to make the commitment to using Team Foundation Server.

Bil Simser did a good post on scrum tools,  although its nearly 3 years old still has some good links.   Again however the tools are not specifically SharePoint.

Why the SharePoint Obsession?

SharePoint is the collaboration tool of choice, companies have deployed it and it is being used with varying degrees of success.  People have become familiar with the how to add items to a list, how to upload documents into a document library and for the more advanced how to build engaging dashboards.

What is the biggest thing you get from adopting scrum?  ‘Visibility’

What do you need to encourage to make Scrum work?  ‘Collaboration’

SharePoint is the natural platform choice on which to build a Scrum tool.

Introducing Project Aberdovey

As with all good development teams I think it is right that your development project should have a name,  and in keeping with some big companies in the Seattle area 21apps uses place names.   Aberdovey, or as it’s spelt in Welsh Aberdyfi, has probably one of the best beaches in the UK and is located 50 miles west of the office.

Put simply, Project Aberdovey is a Scrum tool for SharePoint.

There are a few aims for the project:

1. Produce a fantastic Scrum tool built on SharePoint
2. Develop the solution using agile techniques including TDD
3. Dogfood the solution as soon as possible – what better way to develop the right solution
4. Open development – I want to give feedback on the challenges but also welcome your input

I will be looking for ways to give people visibility,  I am looking at codeplex as an option but welcome any suggestions.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 4th, 2009 at 4:44 pm and is filed under Scrum, SharePoint. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.