As a full-time freelancer and a passionate in GTD it’s been a while since I started reading about how to optimize my time while providing my best services. A time ago I watched Hamids’ video explaining SCRUM in 10 minutes and I got inspired in creating something simple but really useful. I could code a web-based app or some software but Google Spreadsheets was enough powerful to create something nice and I was also able to share it publicly in a very easy way.
What is Agile SCRUM?
The video is really inspiring for all those people like me that try to get its productivity to the next level and hadn’t heard about -or where reluctant to adopt- such a professional project management method for simple solo or very small team projects.
Considering the methodology of SCRUM I’ve designed a Google Spreadsheet for freelancers or small teams ready to use. It is very basic but gives you an overall idea and accuracy in a fast and simple way on how the project is evolving during its process.
Simple Agile SCRUM template for freelancers
How to use the Spreadsheet
- Fill in the name or description of the tasks in the first column.
- On the second column to the right, estimate the hours needed for each task in total (among all days).
- Fill in the daily calendar with the initial estimated hours you will dedicate to each task every day.
These are just initial estimates, once you start the burnout you can correct them. This way you will see how accurate you where while planning and will help you estimate better on the next project. - Now estimate your burnout by filling the cells in the Estimate your burnout row
This should represent the amount of hours you dedicate each day to the project. - Change the numbers at the top row to your own dates.
You should only edit the cells in white (the ones without a formula in it). Some columns and rows are hidden to fit the screen of a laptop, if you need more space just unhide them.
Download
Follow the link to see the Spreadsheets:
Agile SCRUM Project Management Google Spreadsheets
And click the button Use this template.
Learning the Art of Agile Development
If you are interested in learning more about Agile techniques I encourage you to read The Art of Agile Development from James Shore and Shane Warden, it presents all the concepts and ideas needed to start putting Agile into practice.
Changelog
28 Sep 2011
- Fixed an error that ignored the first row hours in the total time
4 Feb 2011 – Version 2.1
- Fixed Time (left) from being negative @Shannon
25 Nov 2010 – Version 2
Thanks to all your feedback guys! I have rewritten the whole spreadsheet to improve it with the feedback from the community (both by posting in the comments or by email) and other minor fixes:
- Improved UI
- Added Real Time Spent (to differentiate between estimated time and extra time spent). Suggested by @Mike
- Updated graphic to the new version of Charts (this may help in exporting the spreadsheet to Excel) @Jai
- Calendar is flexible now (starting from Day 1)
- Calendar extended (unhide columns to view them)
- Task list extended (unhide rows to view them)
- Conditional coloring to improve UX
Instructions, feedback, requests and support
Have some ideas? Feedback welcome! If you wish to add some modifications or come up with an improved design please let me know and I’ll update the Agile SCRUM Google Spreadsheet.
Photo by Alan Dayley
About the author
Published on July 20, 2010 by Xavi Esteve, a UX Designer and a Front-End Developer with more than 10 years of experience. I am currently working for Fitbug as a Front-end Developer in London UK and enjoy contributing to the Open Source community, sharing interesting links in Twitter and blogging about related topics.
Comments (48)
Hey for templates, you should use the templates gallery that Google Docs has. http://docs.google.com/templates – that way you can get more exposure in that gallery. And you can provide a link that users can get to get a copy of it.
July 21st, 2010 at 13:30Thanks for the tip Ronald! I’ve submitted the template, should be visible soon :)
July 21st, 2010 at 13:38Wicked Xavi I will give it a go.. I will be putting up an excel I have created that has made me alot more efficent, by putting a theory I learnt into practce.. will let you know when it is done.
Yas
July 22nd, 2010 at 15:59Hi Xavi,
July 25th, 2010 at 06:33I liked your application very much. I am already testing it with a book project i have going on.
I would like to know if you can show me how to turn that example into a 45 or 90 day project? You could use the free Jing to put a quick video together.
I was able to extend the formulas to the right of the spreadsheet, except when it came to the “Total time done (estimate)” and “Total time left (from estimate)”.
So how do we do that?
Thanks a lot Cleia Grubb
By the Way, I see you are in Spain. Yo soy brasilena. Mucho gusto.
Hi Cleia,
Glad you find the spreadsheet useful :)
I’ll give it a try at Jing when I get some time, looks very cool.
The “Total time done (estimate)” is filled manually by you depending on your estimates on how much work time you assign every day. In my case, I use to work 3-4 hours on weekends and take Fridays off (so Fridays have an estimate of 0 and weekends of 3-4) but that’s just an estimate to draw the red line in the chart and give you a general idea. If the project evolves or changes its specifications, you can keep tweaking the estimates to adapt it.
The “Total time done left (from estimate)” is the total amount of estimated time still left to do, this row should fill automatically and it is mainly used to display the red line in the chart.
Hope this helps! Good luck with your book project :)
Salud!
July 26th, 2010 at 00:01Thanks. I am not getting the graph when I download the excel sheet. Can you help?
October 14th, 2010 at 07:23I really like your template, thanks for sharing!
If there is one comment I have, the issue I run into using this is how to account for time overruns. So, if you end up spending more time on a task than you wish, there doesn’t seem to be a way to represent this without breaking the graph. Am I doing something wrong?
October 18th, 2010 at 09:04I was hunting around the web to see what the current “crop” of spreadsheets for Scrum might have. Low and behold here is a nice spreadsheet shared by you. And I was surprised to find the photo at the top was mine!
Thanks for citing the photo properly. I’m glad you could use it. And thank you for a nice spreadsheet template. I’ll be looking at it as a possible use for myself or some other situation.
November 2nd, 2010 at 22:21Hi guys,
Glad you like the template. As I said, it is really basic since it was my first approach to the SCRUM methodology and I used it to immerse myself in the Agile world. Here’s my reply to some of the most recent comments.
@Jai: When exporting Google documents to Excel you may loose some information but you can recreate the graphic manually through Excel by creating an Area graph and selecting the fields D34 to Q35.
@Mike: You are right, I didn’t expect to note down extra time on each task but it is definitely useful. Although as you say, the graphic breaks when added (ouch), maybe adding another row at the bottom called “Total time done (extra)” plus some formula recoding may help. When I get some time I’ll go through it. Thanks for the tip!
@Alan Dayley: While looking for open licensed SCRUM related photos I saw yours and I loved it! :) I loved the realism of it since you can see the “inside parts” of a project within a team (with all the post-it notes and color markers). I added the SCRUM graphic on top to relate it with the spreadsheet. Glad you like it and it is always a pleasure to link back to nice pictures like yours. Thanks for believing in open knowledge :)
November 2nd, 2010 at 22:49I have released Version 2 of the spreadsheet. Feedback welcome as always :)
November 25th, 2010 at 17:26Love this — just one quick question: if time runs “over” (greater than original estimate time), I can’t seem to get the chart to “zero”, even if I add enough work time to the timeline to match the hours for time-remaining. What am I doing wrong?
December 13th, 2010 at 21:26Hi Mark, that’s got a quick fix. Edit the chart (click on it, at the top left click the arrow next to Burnout and then Edit chart…) and increase the Data range, it should look something like “C37:W38″, change it to “C37:Z38″ (or as long as you need). I have also updated the Public Spreadsheet increasing the range in the chart. Hope this helps
December 13th, 2010 at 21:36Thanks Xavi for the help; I must need more caffiene today!
Is there a way to allow the chart to bring the “Burnout” line to zero also? (to show when the work was finally completed… in addition to the Estimate line)
After adding time in additional columns, like Z38, and editing the graph like you said, the “total time left (from spent)” line is what I can’t get down to zero to show when I finished the project.
December 13th, 2010 at 21:57Found my problem — the formulas in the “total time left (from spent)” row were not including the first row of data in my copy. Works like a champ now! Thanks for developing this and sharing, Xavi.
December 14th, 2010 at 15:56I have downloaded your version 2, but cannot see the chart, why?! Can someone help?! Thanks!
December 17th, 2010 at 15:38Hi Elvina,
It loads OK, try waiting until the page is fully loaded or create your own, range is C37:AC38 and the chart is Area.
Great spreadsheet BTW thanks!
December 17th, 2010 at 20:58Hi, this spreadsheet is really great but I’m not sure about a couple of things, if you could shed some light on this it would be much appreciated:
* Is it fair to say that after you’ve estimated in the 2nd column that this estimate shouldn’t ever change and that if you need to add more hours to the task that you just add more hours in the calendar for it?
* The “Time spent” column defaults to the Time (estimated), but what is the best practice for when you’ve over estimated a task since it will still show that you have time left to finish it?
* How come “time left” becomes can is a negative number when you go over your “Time (estimated)”? it’s difficult to understand when you have a negative amount of time remaining.
Your feedback is MUCH appreciated! Thanks!
January 25th, 2011 at 04:48I love your spreadsheet. Was looking for a better way to track my 20+ small projects and spent 2 days looking at scrum and how it could help my IT projects. I stumbled on your spreadsheet while searching Google templates. Would you consider doing a 5 minute video tour of your spreadsheet for those of use new to Scrum? Thanks again!!!
February 3rd, 2011 at 20:03This is brilliant, just what I needed. Thanks
February 4th, 2011 at 19:11Hi guys,
Thanks you for the positive feedback!
@Shannon:
- Question 1: Estimations should be done before starting the project and not changed again (this will provide feedback on estimations for the next project and help to be more precise). Just allocate more hours for any tasks that need more time and the “Time (Spent)” column will update automatically to show them.
- Question 3: The “Time (left)” column is now fixed and it will not be negative.
@Matt: I am starting to write the script for the videotutorial :)
February 4th, 2011 at 20:40Is there anyway to work with more than 60 days, using this spreadsheet?
February 27th, 2011 at 00:56@Henrique: Yes, you can add as many columns (days) as you want, you may need to adapt the chart and replicate the formulas in them.
March 1st, 2011 at 14:05Hola Xavi, tu hoja para SCRUM me gustó mucho. La he escogido de entre montones que revisé porque es bastante intuitiva y la interfaz es agradable a la vista (aunque se puede ajustar un poco el tamaño a más grande y te diré porqué más adelante).
Creo que hay otras ‘plantillas en Google’ que incluyen el WBS de manera muy fácil también, así que supongo que puedes llevar esto a un programador tipo Gantt de forma rápida.
Creo que las letras o casillas (que son ajustables por cualquiera) podrían desde el inicio venir más grandes ya que un administrador de proyectos o un director de proyectos generalmente tiene una mente amplia y expansiva y así ha de ser la visual sobre la que trabaja para que sus procesos mentales funcionen bien y a ese nivel.
Las visuales diminutas o ‘donde todo cabe en el mismo sitio’ son útiles especialmente para métodos o prácticas como SCURM, ¡Que son visiones a corto plazo o en detalle simple!, pero tu hoja podría tener otra versión que llamara más la atención a un director más que a un gerente o ejecutivo… y si le agregas el Work Breakdown Structure, más que seguro que la implementaría rápidamente este tipo de público. Creo que eso te interesaría, ¿no?
Bueno, gracias de nuevo. Espero haberte servido de ayuda en algo, hasta una nueva oportunidad.
Ing. Asdrubal
March 30th, 2011 at 14:20@Asdrubal muy interesante! Cuando tenga un rato libre mirare de incrementar las celdas y de adaptar la hoja (o crear una nueva) para agregar el WBS. Gracias por el feedback!
March 31st, 2011 at 10:55[...] is to provide people with a tool or information that will make their lives easier, for example, an Agile SCRUM Spreadsheet which helps projects managers and freelancers to organize themselves or Facebook lists to control [...]
April 11th, 2011 at 15:40Hi, I think your template is really useful and I’d like to try it, but can’t download it here or on Google docs. It says the spreadsheet can’t be downloaded. Any way to re-post here? Thanks in advance.
May 11th, 2011 at 16:41Hi Thomas, I have fixed the link, it should work now.
May 11th, 2011 at 17:27I keep getting a document error when I try to download, can you send me the spreadsheet – I think it would be very useful as I am in the middle of getting a Phase 2 mobile app development project underway and would like to use Agile. FYI – I am also a freelance PM.
- Sanjay Jain
May 20th, 2011 at 20:51Hi Thomas and Sanjay,
May 20th, 2011 at 21:10You need to go to File > “Create a copy…” (not “download as”). I’ve tried it with another computer and it lets me do it. If it still doesn’t work let me know.
I really like your SCRUM Google Spreadsheet, but it would be nice if it also had a financial component to easily track and determine development costs. If each sprint also contained fields to enter data on Labor and Material costs a budget could be determined and used to seek or appease investors.
June 11th, 2011 at 17:05Thanks,
Brennan
Hi Brennan,
Thanks for the tip! I’ve considered adding new features and while it would be great to calculate budgets, I guess the spreadsheet looses its biggest advantage which is simplicity.
Maybe adding a second sheet and calculating everything there so that the main sheet doesn’t get too cluttered?
June 13th, 2011 at 16:08Hi, Xavi
IMHO you missed the point when using TIME for task estimations. I’d suggest reading “Scrum and XP from the trenches” for example and then you’ll realize that the only thing you need is to measure finished stories while working to achieve a sustainable pace. With your approach you’re encouraging a sort of micromanagement focusing the daily scrum on a revision of the expectations created in the sprint planning meeting instead of finding out impediments blocking people to finish their tasks. Estimations are NOT predictions. :-)
Best regards and thanks for sharing,
July 3rd, 2011 at 23:55JMB
I was unable to download the template I get the message “We’re sorry, your spreadsheet cannot be copied at this time.” Can anyone tell me where I can download this template without headaches?
September 27th, 2011 at 22:39Hi Crox,
September 27th, 2011 at 22:43Follow the blue button in the post and click on Use this template. A file called “Copy of Simple SCRUM Agile Project Management (version 2.1)” should open. That’s already the copy for you ready to use, let me know if it doesn’t work.
I think there is a formula error for row 38 starting at column F. The sum starts at F4 but I think it should be F3. This error is also in all the following cells in row 38. It’s trivial since after the first few days the first task is already complete but I thought I would mention it.
September 28th, 2011 at 18:42Great worksheet btw. :)
September 28th, 2011 at 18:43Hi rljohnsn,
September 28th, 2011 at 19:08You are right! Thanks for spotting that out, it’s now fixed.
here is what i do :
1.i click the blue button “agile scraum project managment google spredsheets”
2.i click “use this template”
3. i get the massage :”We’re sorry, your spreadsheet cannot be copied at this time.”
please can you send it to me : croxrapsoft@yahoo.com
September 29th, 2011 at 14:45I get the same error message when trying to access your template on google docs…
November 20th, 2011 at 18:40Would it be available anywhere else?
great blog btw.
Thanks
Hi crox and LPP,
November 20th, 2011 at 18:47Looks like Google has some issues with this. Use a different browser and if that doesn’t work instead of clicking the “Use Template” try going into Google Docs and creating a document with “Create New” then choose “From Template”.
Hi Xavi,
January 17th, 2012 at 19:44I am playing with your spreadsheet and I would understand what I have to do if a task planned to take 40 hours to complete will be completed in only 32 hours. If I write only the numbers the graph will be wrong because it displays a step on the bottom which height is equal to the sum of all hours that weren’t spent (because I suppose to finish in a shorter time).
I’m not sure I understand how to use your sheet for tracking.
The key to scrum is that each day you re-estimate the remaining effort to complete a task. If you estimated a task to be 10 hours and you worked on it for 4 hours yesterday the remaining estimate *is not* 6 hours. The remaining estimate might be 0 hours (you kicked ass, burning down 10 hours in 4) or it might be 20 hours (it kicked your ass, and you now believe the task was much greater than originally estimated).
I can’t seem to figure out how to input your daily estimates. Maybe an example of the two scenario above (a burn down and a burn up example) might help me understand how you should input your daily estimates.
May 18th, 2012 at 18:25I also want to ask about if the estimation takes longer thant the finish time. Example: I estimate for 6 hours but in real, I can finish it in just 4 hours. What should I do to handle this situation in this spreadsheet? Should I change my initial estimate from 6 to 4?
February 16th, 2013 at 18:13Question,
Not sure if this post is still monitored but I will submit a question anyways.
I added the template to GOOGLEDOCS, then I tried to download the .XLSX to my computer so I could make changes and make the spreadsheet bigger for my screen.
However, in doing so the chart changes, I only see the blue line now listed as burnout, and no red line at all, it vanishes when downloading.
Any ideas?
March 7th, 2013 at 06:06Hi Colin,
Converting to XLSX sometimes looses part of its formulas. I’d recommend you to re-do the chart (copy the formula from Google and paste it again in Excel). By the way, if you just want to have more fields, have you tried unhiding columns in the spreadsheet? I left some hidden that you can unhide to make it bigger.
March 7th, 2013 at 09:00Hey Xavi,
Thanks for the quick reply, I ended up creating my own hybrid system of KANBAN and SCRUM techniques to suit my needs, I’m a graphic designer so a 100% SCRUM solution seemed the wrong way to approach my organizational method.
Mainly due to the time estimations and as a designer things usually come back to my desk several times, where with coding, you code it, it works, it’s done, moving forward.
Needed something more adaptive, but some SCRUM things I love like the sprinting and tracking your time.
March 7th, 2013 at 10:11Its such as you learn my mind! You seem to understand a lot approximately this, like you wrote the guide in it or something. I feel that you simply could do with a few percent to pressure the message home a little bit, but instead of that, this is fantastic blog. A great read. I’ll definitely be back.
April 10th, 2013 at 04:52Great site. A lot of useful information here. I’m sending it to several buddies ans also sharing in delicious. And of course, thank you for your sweat!
April 10th, 2013 at 05:15