FAQ - Agilo for Scrum
Welcome to the FAQ of Agilo for Scrum. In order to keep this page up to date and useful we would like to ask you to support us. So, if you don't find the right answer below, let us know!
FAQ
- Versions of Agilo
- Sprint Backlog view
- Backlogs
- Task, User Stories and other Items
- Admin Interface
- Teams View
- Bugs
- General Stuff
- Licensing Back to Agilo
- Import / Export
- Integrations
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1. Versions of Agilo
- Agilo for Scrum Open Source: The source code of Agilo for Scrum can be downloaded and used for free.
- Agilo for Scrum (Free): Agilo for Scrum can be used for free. We provide and installer, pre-build eggs for Trac etc. For the first 30 days Agilo Free contains some features of the Pro Version, which will be deactivated after the 30 days.
- Agilo Pro: Agilo Pro is a subscription Model and contains additional feature delivery every 2 month like the Planning Board (Online Whiteboard) and professional support for your production.
- Hosted Agilo: We provide a Hosted Service for Agilo Pro
2. Sprint Backlog view
What are these buttons for? Backlog: Save, Sort Tickets: Delete, Remove Planning: Calculate, Confirm
3. Backlogs
Does Agilo for Scrum allow multiple Product Backlogs?
Solution 1: In Agilo you can set up different projects and each project has its own and independent Product Backlog.
Solution 2: In case that multiple Product Owner partitioning the work you can use the "component" property of Stories and Requirements to assign a particular portion of the Backlog to a Product Owner. Every Backlog allows you to filter by that component so that every Product Owner can see the whole but also only his portion of the backlog.
Planning/Confirm
Pushing this button you confirm the commitment the first day of a sprint. This happens usually at the sprint planning meeting. All the commitments, the estimated velocity (in story points) and the sprint capacity in the team metrics (viewable from the team site) will be set.
Backlog/Save
Pushing this button you save the current item position and also the changes you made inline to items in the backlog. The first time you push the button you also confirm that the items that agilo found in the system and pushed into the backlog are really belonging to it.
Backlog/Sort
In the WebAdmin interface you can define which columns you want to appear in the Backlog View. For each column you can also define if it’s a key for sorting the that Backlog. The sorting is on multiple levels and it is stable (means is keeping the sorting done by the highest ordered keys - see order column in the backlog admin)
Planning/Calculate
In Scrum you never estimate everything from the beginning. You start with the highest prioritized Requirements/User Stories, break them down into tasks and than you estimate these tasks. With the Ticket/Calculate button Agilo gives you a smart help to get an automated overall estimation for the whole Sprint. If you choose well estimated Stories Agilo calculates the remaining time considering the User Story Point estimation, and making a projection for the remaining stories committed in the Sprint.
Tickets/Delete
Using this button you delete the ticket from the system. You need specific rights to do or even to see this button. Normally this rights are granted to the Administrator of the system.
Tickets/Remove
Using this button you remove the Ticket from the Backlog. It will still be in the System. If you want to delete the Ticket permanently you need to push the Delete button (special user rights needed). Be aware that in case you are in a “global” backlog the ticket will not be removed.
What are "Contingents"? How are they used?
The Contingents are an invention of agile42. This concept allows you to "remove" a part of the team capacity, and to store it aside for not plan-able contingencies. This could be e.g. a Bug Fixing contingent to fix bugs in a production release, while you are in a sprint. The idea of contingents is to create buffers for transparency and to give control to the Team not to miss the commitment. This buffer is normally negotiated with the Product Owner at the beginning of every sprint.
4. Task, User Stories and other Items
What are Resources?
In Agilo every Ticket/Item can have a owner (assign to). Resources are every other Team Member working on a task, not being the owner. A resource is allowed to book remaining time on a task, but not to change its status, this only the owner can do. Useful for design meetings, and any other activity which is performed by more than one person, also pair-programming :-)
What is Importance?
Importance is what Mike Cohn calls 'Mandatory", 'Linear' and 'Exciter' stories, according to the Kano Analysis. It represents what is needed, what is wished and what would excite the user of the system. This property can be very useful to make a bit of "risk management", try to push forward all the mandatory first, than some linear and than the exciters. You can change the Importance at any time because the system is completely dynamic. (If you set Importance as a key for the backlog sorting in the admin interface to set calculate filtering on Importance.)
5. Admin Interface
Can I change the terms in Agilo like Requirements, Impediment, Story?
Yes, if your company uses different terms than the default Agilo terms you can change these in Admin Interface: Agilo/Types. Click on the link and change the alias of a type, that is what is used in the interface, do not try to change the name of the predefined agilo types (task, story, requirement, bug), this will affect the way agilo works.
How can I configure or add new Items/Ticket types in Agilo?
You can configure every Agilo Item in the Admin Interface: Agilo/Types. Clicking on the link you will see all the pre-configured Agilo types. You can change the fields for a type and also add new types of tickets for your own specific needs (e.g.: impediment).
Can I add a new field to the Items/Tickets in Agilo?
You can add custom fields to Agilo at the Admin Interface: Agilo/Fields
Why the sprint backlog does not show the bugs associated with that sprint?
You can add bugs in the shown types for the sprint backlog from admin interface.
6. Teams View
Can I see the actual capacity, overtime etc. of a team member?
Pushing the Teams button in the upper menu you will find a list of all you teams. Clicking on team you will see for every team member the individual capacity. When e.g. the number becomes red, means that the actual committed time for that resource is above the capacity that the resource entered in his/her calendar for that sprint. You can also see all the sprint statistics including Velocity (Estimated and Actual) and Commitment/Capacity, as well as the sprint ratio between User Story Points and Remaining Time.
7. Bugs
Is there a way to track remaining time on a bug?
You can add tasks to it, than the total remaining time will be shown on the bug, this is the way we suggest, because more than one task might be needed to fix a bug. You can also configure the type:bug individually. As a best practice we suggest to write tasks whenever it makes sense to (e.g.: more than 2h-4h of work depending on the Sprint duration)
8. General Stuff
Can I see the status of a story: Not Started, In Progress, Complete, Accepted?
If you click on a requirement you will see the status of all related user stories. If you want to see the status of tickets in a backlog you can just add the status column to the backlog viewable columns from the admin interface
Is there a view or report that simulates a Planning Board?
Yes, Agilo PRO has this feature which supports you at the Daily Standup Meeting
Is there a roadmap that describes the future plans for the tool?
Sure! But it is not public. We plan to open the Agilo Development Website to the masses, but given our limited time, it will be a significant effort to make triage and sorting of all the requests in a sensible way.
9. Licensing
In order to use Agilo PRO you need to activate a license. For your evaluation we offer a Free 30 Day Trail. After that you need to buy a Team-License. You can activate the licenses as the Admin.
Which licenses model Agilo for Scrum provides?
Currently a user license means 'concurrent users' (on a daily basis). That means the first user logging in the morning locks the license for the whole day, so you need one license per user unless you have some users that only login every once in a while in which case you can take the "risk" of having a shared license, or a pool of those.
10. Import / Export
Is there an automated tool for importing existing SVN repositories into Trac and Agilo for Scrum?
You can use SVN tools, Trac just connect to existing repositories as such, you do not need to import. The only condition is that the SVN repository is located in the same place where the Trac server runs, as the SVN API are available only via filesystem.
11. Integrations
Is Agilo for Scrum compatible with Bitten?
Yes and we use it integrated with that on https://dev.agile42.com/
The agile42 team Back to Agilo