Tech Briefs

Savannah River National Laboratory

Agile Task Tracking Tool (A3T©)

The A3T© is an Excel-based tool for Agile project management teams to track tasks and improve project performance in a simple, user friendly format.

Description

The tool is designed to resemble a Kanban board including digital “sticky notes,” Scrum artifacts, numerous indicators, and burndown/schedule performance charts. It provides a highly visible format using a simple process to track tasks that only requires the team to input task dates from auto-generated dropdowns. The charts and indicators are autogenerated and updated based on the current date and task dates. The tool has the capability to track five sprints, each with as many as 20 tasks, and provides an auto-generated summary status of the planned release product. It also automatically calculates team velocity, enabling the team to have historical data for improving future task estimates.

A3T© Board Layout: 1) Sprint Backlog (up to 20 tasks), 2) Digital “Sticky” Note, 3) Roadblock Notes, 4) Dropdown Dates, 5) Task Traffic Lights, 6) Roadblock Indicators, 7) Team Velocity Performance, 8) Burndown Chart, 9) Schedule Performance Index (SPI) Chart

Benefits

  • Excel-based, requiring no special software to operate
  • Simple to load and update
  • Highly visible format resembling Kanban boards with digital sticky notes
  • Automatically generates sprint and release burndown charts using built-in earned-value techniques
  • Provides traffic-light status for each task: In Progress (Yellow), Done (Green) and Roadblocked (Red)
  • Calculates team velocity and forecasts required velocity to meet completion date

Applications and Industries

  • Agile is heavily used in the software development industry. However, this tool is designed to be used in any industry that is applying project management Agile methodologies.

Intellectual Property

  • This tool has received DOE approval to assert copyright and is available for use.

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Contact Information

Savannah River National Laboratory
E-mail: partnerships@srnl.doe.gov