What is Agile Project Management?
In 2001, 17 people met in Snowbird, Utah, to discuss the future of software development. They shared a common frustration about the current state of affairs, although they did disagree on a few points.
The one problem, they all agreed, was that companies were so focused on excessively planning and documenting their software development cycles that they lost sight of what mattered—pleasing their customers.
Their solution, they called Agile: a customer-first approach.
So by the end of the meeting, the first Agile Manifesto emerged at just 68 words - but that short and sweet document went on to change software development forever:
We are constantly uncovering better ways of developing and delivering software solutions by leveraging Agile Project Management and often help others leverage Agile Project Management too.
Through this work we have come to value:
- Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
- Working software over comprehensive documentation
- Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
- Responding to change over following a plan
That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.
What is Zoho Sprints?
Zoho Sprints is Zoho's project management software. It is a dedicated tool for scrum masters, following best practices for Agile management. The core purpose of this tool is to practice Agile using the Scrum methodology. From planning through to execution, every single process is segmented across different stages, called modules.
How does Zoho Sprints work?
Zoho Sprints works on the core concept of Agile project management and is best suited for teams that practise or want to practice agile on day to day basis. It’s potentially a good alternative to Microsoft DevOps and Jira Confluence. However, it’s new compared to the other two and still in the process of improvement and growth. From our personal experience, we consider this tool easier to start with for small teams.
How to manage Projects in Zoho Sprints?
With the scenario that I am about to put in front of you, you will have an idea of how Zoho Sprints works In less than 10 minutes.
Sam is the Marketing Director of his company, and is new to Zoho Sprints. Let's see how he manages his team using it.
Step 1
Create your Project and Invite Users
Sam creates a 'Marketing' project where he will manage all the work items related to marketing, promotion, and events.
Next, he invites all his team members from Marketing as his project members. A few are given managerial roles since they are the leads.
He defines the estimation type of the project, which helps the team in setting the estimation points of the work items in the project.
Step 2
Build your backlog and start your sprint
Sam and his team jot down all the requirements of the project in the Backlogs. (These items include generating articles, tweets, social media promotions, events, workshops, etc.)
He creates relevant sprints in the project. (Social Media sprint which has all the items related to hashtags, Facebook feed, community building queries and other forums. The Blog sprint contains all the upcoming articles to be written. And so on.)
He assigns the managers (leads) as sprint owners.
They prioritize the work items and moves them from the backlog to the sprint.
Now, Sam or the sprint owner can start the sprint.
Workaround your board
As the sprint starts, the sprint team moves the work items across the statuses on the board.
When all the items in the sprint are moved to the 'Closed' status, the team completes the sprint successfully. A part of the project is ready for delivery.
All you need to do is move the work across the statuses as and when they progress. Once everything is done, it's easy to track your progress in different ways.
What are the primary features of Zoho Sprints?
Planning
•Backlogs
•Boards
•Work Item Management
•Epics
Release Management
Reports
•Burnup & Burndown Charts
•Velocity Report
•Cumulative Flow Diagram
•Status Timeline
•Timesheet
•User Profile
•Global-View
Collaboration
•Google Drive
•Google Workspace
•Microsoft 365
•Microsoft Teams
•Zendesk
•Zoho Cliq
•Zoho Desk
•Zoho Mail
•Zoho Meeting
•Zoho Projects
Customization
•Custom Fields & Layouts
•Custom Views
•Project Template
•Custom Item Type
Timesheets
•Timesheet Management
•Timesheet Reports
Developer Tools
•Azure DevOps
•BitBucket
•GitHub
•GitLab
•Jenkins
Zoho Sprints Plans and Pricing
Zoho Sprints offers a free plan that provides up to three users with the ability to manage three projects and 500MB of storage space, which is pretty good for starter businesses or small developer teams.
The Professional plan starts from $8.80 per user per month with no lock in contract and provides the full feature set.
For further details on plan inclusions and a price calculator can be found here.
Conclusion
Zoho Sprints is a very handy tool for both small and large scale teams. It offers everything that you can expect in an Agile Project Management tool - from simple sprint planning to release management and everything in between such as time management, meetings, and more.
We leverage Agile project management methodologies in most projects that we deliver and we pick our tools accordingly to the needs of each project, and our choice is often Zoho Sprints, which we’ve found to be very helpful in managing projects of all sizes.
If you are thinking about leveraging a new tool to assist you with managing your Agile projects contact us and we will help you evaluate if Zoho Sprints will be a good fit for your needs.