Category: Excel

Video tutorial: Advanced Excel template for Product and Sprint Backlog management

October 17, 2008 by Artem Marchenko

Excel is one of the most popular tools for managing the backlogs of the Scrum process. There is a number of templates available and here is a screencast on using one of the advanced ones. This template was created by Petri Heiramo from Digia and includes facilities for managing both product and sprint backlogs. You can download this template on the page with the collection of Scrum templates and examples.

You might also like to have a look at the video tutorials on the simple product backlog template and simple sprint backlog template.

Video tutorial: Managing your Sprint Backlog with the help of a simple Excel sheet

June 9, 2008 by Artem Marchenko

In this 6 min-long tutorial I demonstrate how you can manage your Sprint Backlog in a very simple Excel sheet based on a popular free template. Watch this screencast if you want to get started with Scrum.

Video tutorial: Managing your Scrum Product Backlog with the help of a simple Excel sheet

April 25, 2008 by Artem Marchenko

In this tutorial I demonstrate how you can manage your Scrum Product Backlog in a very simple Excel sheet based on a popular free template. Watch this screencast if you want to get started with Scrum. You will see how to get started, how to detail, inject and remove requirements, how to build burndown and velocity charts.

You can download the somewhat lower quality version of the tutorial from Google Video.

See also

• Video tutorial: Managing your Sprint Backlog with the help of a simple Excel sheet
• Video tutorial: Advanced Excel template for Product and Sprint Backlog management

Simple Sprint Backlog Example

October 15, 2007 by Artem Marchenko

Update: Link to XLS fixed. Kudos to Jukka Laurila

Simple Product Backlog Example

October 9, 2007 by Artem Marchenko

Scrum backlog templates and examples

November 6, 2006 by Artem Marchenko

Bas Vodde collected and published examples and templates of the Scrum product and Sprint backlogs. Most of them are in MS Excel format. Some (XLS) include a lot of comments, some (XLS) are very colourful. Check them out, Excel can really cover most of the needs of the archived backlog tracking.

Cached templates
Here are the cached copies of templates that I reviewed on this website.

• Petri Heiramo's advanced product and sprint backlog template -
  • Video tutorial on using it

See Also

• Simple Product Backlog Example
  • Video tutorial on using it
• Simple Sprint Backlog Example
  • Video tutorial on using it

Being evil is expensive

April 5, 2006 by Artem Marchenko

Once upon a time in a continent far-far away (from Europe) there was a mighty spreadsheet software vendor called Lotus Development Corporation. Their product Lotus 1-2-3 dominated the niche with its almost 100% market share. There was a neglectibly small competitor product named Microsoft Excel. The Microsoft's product better met user needs, integrated well with the word processor and in general was a good product. Unfortunately the Lotus'es overwhelming user base left not a lot of chances for any competitor whatever good he was.

The Microsoft worked real hard to lower the enry barrier. They mailed demo packages by post, built the Lotus-to-Excel convertors, even created a special version of the Windows OS, that could be started without the installation and could run the MS Excel trial only - pretty much everything, that could eliminate the trialing efforts. And the most cunning trick of the Microsoft generals was to introduce the really good Excel-to-Lotus convertor. Yes, you heard it right, Microsoft released the tool that customers could use to switch back to their old good Lotus 1-2-3 whenever they decide that Excel isn't worth any further trials.