On my endeavor to find the perfect SCRUM project management tool I came across a freeware option named “Sprintometer”. It is not entirely free as it sounds but the options it gives to a manager for free is quite outstanding. The application can be downloaded from their website { sprintometer.com } for free.

Sprintometer support project mangement in both XP and SCRUM methodology. Once you create a project it first of all asks the way the project is going to be managed. Then onward a product backlog can be prepared with stories and tasks assigned to it. Each task then can be assigned to a developer or a coder or a tester.

On the basis of the project specification the application itself generated some very useful charts that give the manager a good understanding about where the project is actually heading. Some of these charts are -

• Track Chart: Tracks the amount of work done and the amount of work remaining through a line graph.
• Scope Chart: Shows in hour(s) the amount of work left against a story.
• Resource and Budget Chart: A matrix showing the resource and cost both story-wise and day-wise
• Story Readiness Chart: Shows how much closer to completion a story is through a table.
• Summary Report: Gives a overall report about the story in terms of work done, remaining and days left.
• Workload Report: This shows the amount of workload taken on by each project team members.

From a project manger perspective it gives me a complete hold on where my project is heading. But the only thing it lacks is integration of team members to give their inputs directly to the system. Hope they are working on it and will be made available to the freeware version in near future :p

take care,

- thephpx