Creating an Agile timeline or a sprint schedule is easy, especially if you already keep a list of important meetings and deliverables in a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. OnePager Express will take your task list from Excel and create timelines that everyone on your team can understand. OnePager Express is a Microsoft Excel add-in, so you can launch it directly from Excel without having to export or convert your data. Download a 15-day free trial today, and follow these steps to build your Agile timeline:
Simple Instructions
These instructions are designed for people don't already have a schedule in Excel. You can use our example Excel schedule as a starting point and follow these abbreviated steps to create your chart in a matter of minutes.
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Start by downloading these two sample files to your downloads folder or to your desktop. The Excel file contains the tasks, dates, and milestones, while the *.tat file is the OnePager template that will drive the formatting of the chart you're about to create.
Agile Schedule in Excel.xlsx (Excel File)
Agile Schedule in Excel.tat (OnePager Template)
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Open the Excel file that you just downloaded. From Excel's Add-Ins tab, click the OnePager Express button:
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On the Start screen, click NEW to begin building a new roadmap chart:
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On the next screen, locate the Starting Template section, and go to Change > BROWSE FILES. Browse to your desktop and select the Agile Schedule in Excel.tat that you downloaded in step #1:
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With your Excel file loaded and your OnePager template selected, click Next, and then on the following screen, click Create new chart. OnePager will import the data from your Excel file and create an agile sprint schedule in just a few seconds:
Now that you've done this, you can go back to Excel and adjust the spreadsheet to match the dates and deliverables of your real-world sprints. Once you've done this, follow the same steps again with your updated Excel sheet, and you'll be well on your way!
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Detailed Instructions
These instructions are designed for people who have already built a schedule in Excel and need to import what they already have into OnePager. These instructions also provide more details about customization along the way.
- Open your task list in Excel. Your list can be in any format you like, but you might want to include things like sprints, standup meetings, ongoing backlog planning, and other scrum meetings:
- You might want to group your tasks by sprint or color-code tasks by the responsible team. To do this, insert a "Team" column (Column E above), and specify the person or team assigned to each task. We will use this for grouping in a minute. To color-code by a particular sprint, or by any other category related to your tasks, create a "Task Category" column (Column F above) and enter the category for each task.
- From the Add-Ins tab of Excel, click OnePager Express. (If you haven't purchased OnePager Express yet, you can download a 15-day free trial.) From the Start screen, click New.
- OnePager Express will launch and ask you to name your Agile timeline, which you should do in the Title of New Chart field shown below. You don't need to change any other settings on this page for now:
- Click the Next button to tell OnePager Express which Excel columns you want to import for the Agile timeline:
- For Task label, select the "Event Description" column. For Color by, choose the "Team" column.
- Click on Create new chart. OnePager Express will import your task list from Excel and begin to create an Agile schedule that highlights all of the important tasks for each team:
- Click on Chart Properties and select Rows/Swimlanes in the left-hand pane. Here you will need to change the Task Layout from Gantt Chart to Timeline. Also, in the dropdown, you will need to select Task Category.
- You can continue to fine-tune your schedule, modifying the layout and changing colors until you get something that looks like this:
- Show original sprint dates or percent complete for a sprint
- Add comment boxes, text boxes, or images to your task board
- Change the time scale to show all or part of a longer Agile schedule
Customizable
You can customize your OnePager Express agile project timeline even more before sharing it in a standup, or with other ScrumMasters:
Once you've set up your Agile timeline the first time, it's easy to update it as your schedule changes from day to day. OnePager Express automatically remembers all of your settings, and will use the same template to create updated views of the same schedule as you refresh your task list in Excel.
Get started today by downloading a free trial.
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