The Top 6 Scrum Tools For Project Management

In the last few years, Scrum tools have become the face of agile project management. This agile framework has been adopted by software and non-software development teams worldwide. Due to the up roaring popularity of these tools, many of them have started to recognize themselves as the best. The criteria are simple. Scrum tools that fit your project need to help you effectively achieve your goals without affecting your budget. 

But scrum tools are not just for agile project management; they are also used in production settings, ranging from construction firms to marketing agencies. The best scrum tool for project management will have the following functionalities. It will –  

• Help you run sprints by letting you assign tasks and adjust the backlogs;
• Encourage cross-team collaboration for improving service or a product by incorporating feedback;
• Coordinate workflow, set tasks, track project progress and deadlines; and 
• Offer transparency by showing you who is working on what and the current progression. 

What Does A Scrum Tool Do?

A Scrum tool offers a set of frameworks for producing a product, software, an email campaign, or a consumer product. All Scrum tools are based on essential Scrum elements, which have a crossover with agile tools. However, agile project management tools have a broader scope of agile development and methodology, not just Scrum-related ones. 

The Scrum tools for project management facilitate the Scrum framework, encouraging transparency, collaboration, and efficiency among team members. Scrum tools are beneficial for almost any organization. It organizes workload, facilitates communication, and helps members plan.

The Basic of Scrum Methodology & Software

Backlogs are a critical element of any Scrum tool for project management software. Like sticky notes or a whiteboard, you list all your tasks and requirements on this tool. You can then prioritize your backlog according to the importance and urgency. 

Another critical element is the Product Owner, who owns the discussion on what is included or not as they manage the functional expectations of the product. The Scrum framework segregates time into predetermined compartments for completing each task from the backlog. They are known as sprints. The burndown chart, a graphical representation of a sprint, helps visualize and track progress. 

The daily scrums are meant for all the team members to bring up their issues that need attention and discuss them. Most Scrum tools have meeting or scheduling features to help you plan and coordinate daily scrums efficiently.

And you might feel overwhelmed and confused to find the overabundance of Scrum tool choices the Internet has to offer. So, to make things a little less complex for you, we have compiled a list of the best Scrum tools for project management that will help you choose the best one for your team.

Overview of the Top 6 Scrum Tools

1. Clickup

ClickUp is one of the best Scrum tools. It strikes an impressive balance between practicality, functionality, and high performance. It offers a wide range of training resources. ClickUp is easy to learn, integrate, and customize. It incorporates cutting-edge technology such as NLP and ML. By increasing the team’s productivity, ClickUp can free up a Manager’s hand to attend to more critical tasks.

Key Features

• ClickUp organizes schedule time, calendars, tracks milestones, manages team capacity, syncing everything with the Google Calendar.
• It helps your projects move successfully to completion with collaboration and organized reporting.
• ClickUp customizes spaces, workflows, features, and tags according to your requirements. 
• It integrates and connects with your other productivity tools for the best results.
• Download the app on all the devices to keep an eye on your projects 24/7.

ClickUp advertises itself as intuitive and straightforward. So, what is it like to set up a ClickUp account? Let us explore. 

• Begin with the hierarchy. Create workspaces, teams, projects, and lists.
• Create tasks within the projects. Customize task dependencies, or adjust prioritization as low, normal, high, or urgent.
• Monitor statuses. Each task has three statuses: ‘Planning,’ ‘In Progress,’ ‘Review,’ and ‘Completed.’ It addresses and reduces any risks of bottlenecks.
• It provides ‘Time Estimates’ by calculating how much time remains in the sprint based on the formerly set work estimations. 
• It sets up recurring tasks for your team. It is excellent for those looking to scale the processes across the teams. It enables you to have a repeat schedule. For instance, you can schedule a 9 AM check-up every Friday. 
• Unlike other scrum tools on our list, you get to choose the view – be it board view or box view.

Pricing

• The free plan of ClickUp offers unlimited tasks, unlimited users, and 100MB storage.
• At $5 per month per user, ClickUp offers unlimited dashboards, unlimited integrations, portfolios, goals, and custom fields.
• At $5 per month per user, ClickUp offers Two-Factor Authentication and Google Single Sign-On for easy user account management. Plus, you get goal folders, customer exporting, dashboard widgets, extra guests, and automation features.

2. Monday.com

Monday.com can deliver on tasks and projects for scrum teams as a scrum tool. Let us dive deep. It helps you create and visualize your project plan from the convenience of your dashboard and share it with your team members. Monday.com has a visually appealing, intuitive interface with all the right things at the right place. It has a simple dashboard with all the necessary shortcuts on the left sidebar. 

The dependencies, backlogs, and the spring planning shortcuts are placed within the sub-menus in the dashboard. Monday.com is technically not a Scrum tool or an agile project management tool, but it fulfills all those requirements. The only drawback that prevents Monday.com from becoming the best Scrum tool is the lack of proper burndown charts. It also has a reporting feature, but it does not offer effort grading, sprint progress, and capacity. 

Key Features

• Monday.com offers the provision of brainstorming, visualization, and planning with any number of projects.
• It has a colorful interface with sleek and minimal design aesthetics.
• Its non-intrusive notifications help you maintain focus on work.
• Its integration with other project management tools, mobile devices, and third-party apps is an add-on experience.
• Monday.com offers an incredible learning curve followed up by its support staff, which is available 24/7/365.

Pricing 

The basic pricing plan begins at $39 per month. It goes all the way to the Enterprise Plan, billed according to your company. You can get in touch with the support representatives for custom packages and further information.

3. Wrike

Wrike is one of the top-notch scrum management tools. It offers customizable online Scrum boards to help you improve sprint planning and execution and streamline agile practices. The Wrike board enables you to share progress at any stage with team members and stakeholders. 

The boards can be personalized at any stage for different viewers. It encourages real-time collaboration and eliminates time-consuming check-ins. With the help of dashboards, it is quite easy to prioritize backlogs, manage scrum meetings, and monitor progress. Adapting to Wrike is also quite easy. You can visualize the project goals the way you want to. 

The scrum boards ensure that you maximize your time and talent and balance your workload in seconds. Its time-tracking abilities allow you to get a clear understanding of how long it takes for individual team members to complete their respective tasks and level up your sprint planning game. It accelerates sprint execution to eliminate tedious admin tasks. Wrike boasts of smart automation and generates automated reports, so your team can focus on delivering what matters the most.

Key Features

• Scrum Boards
• Agile Templates
• Custom Request Forms
• Task Prioritization
• Gantt Charts
• Workload Management
• Real-Time Collaboration
• Time Tracking
• Automated Reports
• User Groups and Permissions

Pricing 

Pricing begins at $9.80 per user every month. There are 4 different pricing plans, including a free version and inviting free external collaborators to a paid account.

4. Vivify

The well-balanced, cloud-based app, Vivify, has some helpful Scrum features and an appealing UI. It offers a clutter-free interface that can display all the projects on a single page. It has an intuitive flow and quick navigation. Vivify is a low-risk tool for big organizations. Since it is a free tool, it is only limited in its functionality, not the number of users. Vivify’s free version manages tasks, enables users to build custom workflows, and view basic reports such as burndown charts.

It also allows unlimited boards, and items, in addition to one external integration. However, it does not offer valuable statistics, but the functions provided make it a well-rounded Scrum tool for project management. Vivify can be integrated with Trello, Travis, Slack, BitBucket, Pivotal Tracker, GitHub, and Jira on both Android and iOS. 

Key Features

• Scrum board
• Product backlog management
• Invoice creation and sharing
• Project calendar
• Customized roles and permissions
• Powerful charts and Scrum metrics
• Time tracking
• Customizable project labels
• Third-party application integrations

Pricing 

The pricing plan begins at $1/user/month with a 14-day trial along with a free version for an unlimited number of users. At $8/user/month, Vivify offers a wider array of business functions than you would expect, including invoicing and a files management package. A widget on their pricing page makes it easy for you to calculate the cost of the Scrum tool based on teams of various sizes.

5. Jira

Probably the most widely-used cloud, Jira is a subscription-based scrum tool for Project Management for agile teams. Several project management apps include Jira integrations because of its wide popularity and usage. Jira offers customizable Scrum and Kanban boards, customizable workflows, custom filters for backlog grooming, and dozens of visual reports such as cumulative flow, burndown, velocity, etc. Its functionality includes process templates, road mapping, and a sandbox tool for evaluating different scenarios before making estimates or allocating resources. Jira integrates with several developer tools and offers a real-time overview of the current tasks. 

Key Features

• Customizable Scrum boards
• Powerful progress reports
• Backlog management
• User stories mapping
• Bug and issues tracker
• Time tracking
• Customizable dashboard
• Sprints management
• Custom filters
• Real-time reporting
• Numerous third-party application integrations

Pricing

Jira is a well-rounded tool with reasonable pricing schemes for small, mid-sized teams and enterprises. It costs a monthly amount of $10 for up to 10 users, $7 for 11-100 users, and the quote has to be requested for larger teams of more than 100 users. 

6. Teamwork

A project management software, Teamworks is a Scrum tool trusted by over 20,000 companies across the world. The tool provides everything your business needs to manage work, including file attachment, tasks management, social collaboration, etc.

Teamwork can handle complex projects via board views and dashboards that display current progress and accountability scores. It can be easily integrated with Xero, Dropbox, Google Drive, Slack, QuickBooks, Hubspot, and Zapier. Teamwork also offers three core products as Teamwork Desk, Teamwork Projects and Teamwork Chat.

Key Features

• Plan and manage your workload, individual and team tasks, maintaining complete transparency with your to-dos.
• Track your progress throughout the task lifecycle.
• Spot the bottlenecks. Report and optimize how tasks progress.
• Manage your files using integrations such as Dropbox, Google Drive, Jira, and Box.

Pricing

The Pricing plan begins at $10/user/month, billed annually with a minimum of 5 users. The price depends on the number of projects, users, and storage required. There is a 30-day free trial available. There is a free version available.

Choosing The Best Scrum Tool

While choosing the right Scrum tools, there are critical questions you must ask yourself. They are – 

• What do you need the Scrum tool for?
  Do you need a task management tool, creating client-facing reports, or do you need it for storing documents?
• What size is your team?
  When small teams utilize several Scrum tools, it offers them a range of features for free. But if you are expanding as a team, you have to take the cost of upgrading into account. 
• Which tools should you integrate the Scrum tool with?
  It needs to integrate with your document folder and calendar at the very least. Consider if you want the Scrum tool to integrate with your existing CRM, development application, document management systems, time-tracking apps, resource management apps, and other project management tools.
• How will it fit into your workflow?
  If you are new to Scrum tools, you must choose one with an extensive training resource library, online training, etc.

Final Thoughts

As discussed in the beginning, an efficient Scrum tool is the one that promotes agile ideas such as Collaboration, Sprint Management, Transparency, Retrospectives, etc. Choosing the best scrum tools for your team isn’t easy. The overwhelming variety of Scrum tools makes the task of selecting more difficult. But with a list such as this one, it is easy to decide the tools that can offer the maximum benefit within a friendly budget.