SCRUM + MS Project Server

Question

Looking for free solution which integrates MS Project Server and SCRUM daily meetings. Any suggestions?

Answer 1

I think the two concepts are primarily at odds:

A common pattern for Standup Meetings is to communicate 3 things:

1. "what was accomplished yesterday"
2. "what will be attempted today"
3. "what problems are causing delays"

Are you thinking you can take this information and enter it into Project? What would be the benefit of that?

On the other hand, while I haven't used Project in some time, I think of it as being used to:

1. track resources (people and equipment)
2. track tasks
3. link tasks by prerequisites and critical paths
4. maintain the project plan for the length of the project

A Gantt chart typifies what I think I know about Project.

If you're doing Scrum, you are probably concerned with the current iteration and the current sprint within that iteration. In Scrum, teams tend to be looked at collectively as a group, rather than as individual "resources". Tasks are prioritized by the Project Owner and priorities may change between sprints. There tends to not be a long-view plan that documents and tracks the order and lengths of tasks. Tasks in Project tend to be days or weeks or perhaps months long. Scrum tasks are much smaller, on the order of days or less. So there are a lot of differences

Scrum certainly values "big visible charts" but I'm not sure there's much overlap between the kinds of data that Project can chart and the charts that Scrum practitioners find useful.

Could you cram the Project into Scrum or vice-versa? Perhaps. But to me it feels like Project would be an anchor that would impede "inspect and adapt" more than it would add value to Scrum.