Metrics & task boards in Scrum/Agile!

My thoughts on why and how metrics/measurements of ongoing tasks should be done.

I will start with the practice. The problems we are trying to tackle is:

1. How to make our team believe in their own estimations?
2. What is our cycle time?
3. How do we project the probability of fulfilling the sprint goals?
4. How do we track the state of the task?
5. How do we ensure continuous development of processes?

For the last 3 questions, I suggest referring to the self-explaining Cumulative Flow Diagrams (http://www.slideshare.net/yyeret/explaining-cumulative-flow-diagrams-cfd). Martin Alaimo writes on measuring sprint progress in the Scrumalliance community blogs (https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2011/may/measuring-sprint-progress). Essential Scrum: A practical guide to the Most Popular Agile Process by Kenneth S. Rubin (p.357-359) defines how task metrics can be visualized (though in a table formation) (https://books.google.se/books?id=3vGEcOfCkdwC&pg=PA357&lpg=PA357&dq=visualize+tasks+in+scrum+boards&source=bl&ots=-BBbkkfr_l&sig=KqO_9xWDIEM3hVqe-9QSi0IQKQQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjZk9ztxurKAhWFs3IKHYioBLE4FBDoAQg9MAU#v=onepage&q=visualize%20tasks%20in%20scrum%20boards&f=false). An electronic task board showing the progress (https://www.targetprocess.com/content/uploads/2013/11/lists-sketch-for-Targetprocess-3.png). A detailed article by MSFT on Task board (of course tailored towards VS Team edition usage but has lots of details) (https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/vs/alm/work/scrum/task-board). Another article (https://blog.taiga.io/q-id-like-to-measure-the-sprint-progress-through-closed-tasks.html) very good on why sprint progress should be monitored regularly and not at the end of the sprint.

I know we all hate RallyDev but still a nice article (https://help.rallydev.com/task-board). And again an MSDN article on srcum process workflow (https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/vs/alm/work/guidance/scrum-process-workflow). And a good read on Effective Visual Management of Scrum/Task boards with Information Radiators (https://agilepearls.wordpress.com/tag/scrum-boards/).

For this sprint, I will put information on my tasks which will help visualize the progress as well as track the state of the task and project if we can meet the sprint goals. And it will also help in the retrospective and next sprint planning with estimation.