Let’s beginning with a question, why I choose ScrumWorks but not others, such as Version One (I have try this at few months ago.), XPlanner, Target Process, Mingle.  The reason is this software is developed by a company and has a free version, further more, if I felt it is really useful, I can get a commercial version (It’s called ScrumWorks Pro).

First of all, you should know, if you want run or try this product, you must have a license, even the free version. The license may take one or two days to be handled by Danube, so you first step is registering a new account via the site and fill out the form to request a license.

Then we can download the package from http://danube.com/scrumworks/basic/download now, you might download version 1.8.3. Further more, it needs JBOSS4 to be download when performing installation, you should download it from http://danube.com/hosted/install/basic/1.8.3/jboss-4.0.4.GA.zip.

Extract the zip package and execute setup script, and follow the steps to finish the installation. By default, the product will install a system service in you Windows, you can see it in you console of Services.msc.

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The following steps assume that you have received a email contains license information from Danube.

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Following the pictures below to obtain you license file package and extract it into you local disk.

DownloadLicense 1

DownloadLicense 2

Ok, we have finished the installation. Now we shall try this production.

Open your Internet Explorer, and input the URL: http://localhost:8080 (By default, the port 8080 is listened by JBOSS.) The homepage of ScrumWorks may look like this:

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We should act as an administrator at the first time of using this product. So we should use the Desktop Client rather than Web Client. You can download a new version of JRE by following the link below Desktop Client.

Clicking “Launch ScrumWorks Basic Desktop Client”, it will open a JAVA client application and promote you to input username, password, and import you license. Again, you can do nothing without imported a license.

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Click the button “Licensing…”, it will open the importing license dialog.

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Browse the license you have downloaded from Danube and then import it.

In general, ScrumWorks has build a default administrative account in the new-installation, the username is “administrator” with password “password”. Login into ScrumWorks using this account.

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If you have some experience in Scrum, it is quite easy for you to understand this software, if not, you should spent some time to learn Scrum now.

That’s all for today, enjoy!

One of my friends, 范坚强, will be married in the near future, congratulation for them. It will soon be quit of a curse of Guiyang, peoples of Guiyang should offer their thanks to the great wife.

Generally, I listed all of the scrum tools that I know below (I got this list from http://scrumxp.blogspot.com/2008/09/scrum-scrum.html):

  • Blackboard: This is not a software, if you are a XPer, you must know this well.
  • Spread Sheet: Office Excel is winner of this type. It is simple enough, but it is too simple.
  • Scrum Wiki: I have never used this, in my optional, the functions provided by a single wiki is quite pool for Scrum Team Management. It means only a wiki is not enough to master or run a scrum team.
  • ScrewTurn Wiki: It is a wiki tool underlying .Net, I did some integration for Blog Engine in Dec. 2007, finally, I give up, it is useless for this Blog.
  • Scarab: This project is hosted in Tigris, according my tryout for 2 days, I think it is an Issue Management System rather than a Scrum team Management System. You can use it as a Scrum Management System as you wish, but I really do not.
  • Version One: The first version of software that supporting Scrum totally? The one that holding Scrum? I dot know what this means. I have try this for a short time ( 2 or 3 weeks, I don’t remember.), it is really perfect, but needs a expensive commercial license, so I was looking for a new cheap solution after that till I meet ScrumWorks.
  • XPlanner: No, thanks, it is a Project Management System , but not a Scrum Project Management System.
  • ProjectCards: This tool is very cute, have a lot of tricks, I have try it for 1 days, and felt tied, because I was lost in the GUI. It has a cousin named ExtremePlanner.
  • Mingle: Free version for 5 users. It is developed by Ruby, too slow, and too fat.
  • TRICHORD: I have no ideal with it, because I have no time to investigate it.