Corporate Coder

I have been following a thread on the Scrum development list on yahoo that included some comments about using MS Project to help track the project.  Some of the comments made the case that using MS Project was making a mountain out of a molehill.  I do believe it can be used, and this is how I currently use MS Project.  I use a template that will clue me in on things needed before an iteration.  For instance, I’ll have things like meeting with the DBA’s and server infrastructure people included in an “Iteration 0”.  Also an architecture review (this is not a heavy review, it’s more, agreeing on basics, like “we’re using Sharepoint to house the application, and here’s where the app goes” kind of architecture).  There should be some artifacts from these tasks but not a book.  More like a guide for the real iterations. 

I’ll also have stories.  I think the problem we run into is the fact that MS Project does show durations per story, and that leads to certain expectations.  That’s where the XP folks seem to really not like MS Project.  So maybe that’s something for Microsoft Project people to look into, how can we accommodate the pure XP folks in MS Project, or can you  Currently I’m okay with MS Project because I explain to the team up front that things after the first iteration may change, and they may get more or less stories done by the first release.  So we do not baseline our tasks currently, but use this to keep track of features completed.  I’d love to hear how others are doing this.

Eric Landes