We had a great webcast yesterday with the following title ... "Managing Agile Scrum Projects in SharePoint – The Perfect Match!".  Scrum is an iterative approach to product development which encourages the breakdown of ‘projects’ into finite periods called Sprints of the same length (normally 20-30 days but it can vary) with a defined deliverable due at the end of the Sprint.  650 people registered which is a large audience for such a niche topic.  It was interesting to see the before-webcast survey results, which suggested that most organizations were just beginning to grapple with Scrum. 

Before-Webcast-Survey Question ... "Do you use Scrum for your ‘projects’?"

• No – but we have been considering it (43%)
• Kind of – some limited applications but not fully successful (41%)
• Yes – with success we are happy with (15%)

The webcast had two main sections. Fintan Manning gave a great explanation of what Scrum was all about - theory, concepts, background and practice.  Tyson Prescott delivered a fine demo of managing a Scrum project on SharePoint.  pmPoint includes a Template is based on the Scrum Alliance Scrum Guide.  The template utilizes unique features in pmPoint to help provide a Scrum environment that includes Sprints, Stories, Tasks, Backlogs, Burndown charts, and all the Scrum features necessary to run a Scrum project (see screenshot below).  Fintan and Tyson then answered many, many questions.  The guys must have done well judging by the after-webcast survey results.

After-Webcast-Survey Question ... "Would you now consider using Scrum and SharePoint to collaboratively manage your ‘projects’?"

• No – Scrum does not seem suitable for our needs (13%)
• Scrum Alone – Scrum should work very well for us (24%)
• Scrum and SharePoint – the combination is definitely for us (64%)