Free/Open Source Scrum Backlog Tool

Question

Are there any web-based usable scrum backlog tools which beat excel? I'm especially interested in a product backlog feature, we can do sprint backlog just fine with post-its. The "killer feature" I'm looking for is that I can assign unique priorities for the backlog items. In Excel or text-file this is a no brainer: the order mandates the priority. This is a very basic requirement for scrum backlog to work, yet it seems that the free tools do not support it. Burndown charts would be nice too, but at least it should show the full amount of work left.

I have tried xplanner (didn't have the product backlog feature and seemed dysfunctional otherwise as well) and Agilo (didn't have unique priorities for backlog items).

Answer 1

We've tried many (including xplanner and agilo) and for us the best of the lot is Pivotal Tracker. It's not perfect and has its share of frustrating limitations and quirks, but if I understand your question, Tracker does what you want. You order your backlog. Cards stay in order.

Charts include release burndown, sprint burn-up (accepted points), and velocity.

Answer 2

Did you look at ScrumWorks ? It does not have an unique priority per item, but items can be arranged via drap'n drop, which leads to the same result as two items cannot fit in the same position.

It's not OSS, but the basic edition is a free.

In addition, the items can be clustered by Release. It has Sprint burndown as well and can show the amount of work remaining per release in an histogram.

Answer 3

Several good Scrum tools were also mentioned in this question.

Answer 4

A good survey of Product Backlog tools can be found here http://www.userstories.com/products

Answer 5

Scrumy is the easiest one to use. It is a whiteboard with drag and drop post-its for free and a bunch more features in pro, including a backlog which is really low priced ($7)

Answer 6

We are trying to find a good tool too. We have tried:

• Xplanner (Seems to be dead)
• Agilefant (IMHO weird backlog item handling)
• icescrum2 (instable, kicks you out of the application every few minutes)

Thanks to http://www.userstories.com/products we have now some more to check. I'll keep you posted when we find something that suits us, so maybe it suits you too.

Answer 7

Agilo for Scrum is available as a Free Version and you can also have download the Source Code. Its based on Trac, and provides SVN and Eclipse integration.

Answer 8

I tried Agilo and found it buggy, which is a pity because it seemed promising.

There's also Retrospectiva, which supports some sort of "Agile" management using an extension(1). But I don't like the way it's structured. It has you estimating Stories, which go toward implementing a Goal. Whereas I think of Tasks being what are estimated, a bunch of Tasks contributing to a Story. It also doesn't seem to have a way to accrue time toward a Story, ie. you can't say that you've done 4 of 8 hours work on a Story.

Retrospectiva's AgilePM wiki

Answer 9

In Scrum Tool it is very easy to sort product backlog with drag and drop. You can move your most important stories to the top of the backlog and save the order. Importance of a story is calculated automatically, based on position, but can changed manually as well.

You can print story cards and burn down chart.

A unique feature is tagging backlog items.

It is not web based, but you can run it on Windows and Linux desktops and store your data in a PostgreSQL database on your network.

This is a very new software, but very useful in traditional white board based projects. Current version is freely available.

Answer 10

@Patrick Cornelissen hi XPlanner is not dead! XPlanner-Plus is an open source tool for agile, scrum teams. It's based on XPlanner and has a new and improved features, such as fancy design, email notifications for tasks' status and others. It has been redesigned. Demo is available.

Answer 11

Have a look at Express. It is open source and completely free. the interface is clean and easy to use and it has a nice feature set. It is a Flex RIA client with a Java backend which can be deployed on any Tomcat instance.

Answer 12

You may want to check out VersionOne, which is web-based and offers a free trial. Story and defect tracking, release and sprint management, interactive taskboard for standups, velocity and burndown reports, open-source tool integrations, everything's built in...and yes, it will let you assign priorities for backlog items too.

Answer 13

If you use VisualStudio and Team System, there's a pretty good scrum-centric template here: http://scrumforteamsystem.com/en/default.aspx.

Answer 14

When a company develops a lot of software, slick interfaces of projects can become very hard to look at and work with. Light, simple, but elegant UIs are best for these conditions-which can be very powerful too. The answer I found was ScrumAlot. It is still in pre-alpha but I got to talk to lead of marketing... I can't wait till version 1. It has good balance I think.

Answer 15

Try Kunagi. http://kunagi.org

Answer 16

There's also http://www.redminebacklogs.net