The Scrumpy blog
Practical writing on sprint planning, backlogs and running an agile team, from the people building a scrum tool you will actually enjoy.
How to run planning poker on a Teams call with a link instead of an app, the screen setup that stops the window juggling, and when an app is worth it.
On a calendar a cycle and a sprint look identical. Who ends one, where unfinished work goes, what a cooldown is for, and what "60% done" really counts.
How to build a burnup chart across several teams: why summed story points mislead, the two versions that work, and a spreadsheet you can start this sprint.
AI assistants are great at the clerical half of scrum and bad at the decisions. A practical split for stand-ups, refinement, sprint planning and reviews.
Scrumpy has a built-in MCP server. Connect Claude or another AI assistant to ask how the sprint is going, create stories, use epic templates and plan sprints.
Scrumpy's epic templates turn a recurring process, like onboarding a new colleague, into one epic with all its stories, filled in and assigned in seconds.
Linear counts unestimated issues as one point and rolls work over on its own. The ten minutes of settings, and the one habit, that turn cycles into sprints.
Git records what changed. With coding agents writing more of it, the board is where the why and the decisions behind your product survive.
When a coding agent does the typing, the story becomes the spec. Why vague stories cost more with AI, and what a story needs to hold so the result is right.
Jira Free covers real scrum for 10 users. The limits that bite first, who counts as a user, and what the eleventh person does to your bill.
Forecast an epic's finish from remaining points, a velocity range and scope growth. A worked example, and how to give stakeholders a date that holds.
You can add work to a running sprint, but something has to come out. How to handle mid-sprint requests, who gets to say no, and how to count creep so it stops.
A tested comparison of the free planning poker tools worth using in 2026, including the exact limit each one hits: 9 votes, 10 people, 6 weeks, or ads.
How to run a planning poker session that ends in fifteen minutes: what to prepare, which stories to bring, and what to do when votes are miles apart.
Seven sprints of one epic whose scope grows from 80 to 110 points: how to read an epic or initiative burnup, and what Jira's Epic Burndown hides.
If Linear's cycles feel too loose for a real sprint commitment and review, Shortcut, Scrumpy and Jira are the alternatives to try, and who each one suits.
Scrum tools compared for teams of five to twenty: real prices at twelve people, which do sprints natively, and how each one counts seats.
An honest comparison of Jira alternatives for teams under twenty: what each one costs, which do real sprints, and when to just stay on Jira.
Cancelling Jira took me over 2.5 months and around 20 emails. What vendor lock-in in a project management tool really looks like, and how to check for it.
Scrum for agencies means fixed-price contracts, a borrowed product owner and three projects on one team. What adapts cleanly to client work, and what does not.
Azure Boards gives you sprints, velocity and burndown, free up to five users. Here is what it is great at, and where a small scrum team starts to stall.
Planning poker works, but most small teams do not need it every sprint. Four cheaper ways to size stories, and when the cards are worth it.
A small team can absorb most of the scrum master's job. Here is the part that quietly rots when nobody owns it, and what a certification actually proves.
Sprint review and retrospective do different jobs for different audiences. What each is for, who belongs in the room, and a sprint review agenda that works.
"Who is reviewing this?" is a routing decision, not standup news. How per-status auto-assignment works, versus Jira and CODEOWNERS, and where it backfires.
What to do when stories roll over to the next sprint: carry them at full size, cancel what you will not finish, and track your rollover rate.
Give any external system a team-scoped API key to create, update and delete stories. Turn a support form, alert or migration script into backlog stories.
Acceptance criteria that stop work coming back as not what I meant: the test every line must pass, a worked example, and when Given/When/Then helps.
How to export issues from Jira to CSV for a project, board or sprint, the 10,000-row limit, and how to keep statuses, points and parent links intact.
Epic vs story vs task explained: what each backlog level is for, why none of them are part of Scrum, and a simple test for when your team needs an epic.
Sprint velocity is the average story points your team finishes per sprint. Here is the calculation, what counts as done, and the limits of planning by it.
Linear is excellent, and specific. Why there is no free read-only seat for clients, where its cycles part ways with scrum, and who is better off elsewhere.
Zenhub adds real scrum reporting to GitHub issues, but it works only with GitHub and bills for every seat. Here is the lock-in to weigh before you commit.
The Scrum Guide sets one hard rule on sprint length. Which teams should run one-week sprints, which need four, and how to switch without breaking velocity.
GitHub Projects lives next to your code, runs iterations and draws a burn up chart, but has no burndown or velocity. Where a scrum team hits its limits.
Notion has a real native Sprints feature now, but no story points, velocity or burndown. Here is how far it takes a scrum team and exactly where it stops.
A sprint burn-up and a burndown draw the same data but answer different questions. What each one plots, how scope changes split them, which to trust.
How to write a user story clear enough to build: the As a / I want / so that format, when to drop it, acceptance criteria, and splitting big stories.
Monday.com looks affordable per seat, but a three-seat minimum and a separate product for real scrum change the math. Here is the honest total for a small team.
What a definition of done and a definition of ready are, how they differ from acceptance criteria, and how to keep both short enough to use.
Asana approximates scrum with templates and custom fields, but has no native story points, sprints or velocity. Here is what that costs a scrum team.
A practical Trello scrum setup: the lists, Power-Ups for story points and burndown, running sprints without a sprint object, and when it stops paying off.
A guide to sprint retrospectives that lead to real change: a simple format, the one rule that keeps it honest, and how to stop repeating the same complaints.
A practical guide to the daily standup: what it is really for, how to keep it short, why the three questions go wrong, and how to run it remotely.
Jira and Linear charge a full seat for anyone who just wants to view the board. Here is why read-only access should be free, and which tools get it right.
A practical guide to backlog refinement: how often to do it, what a refined item looks like, and how to stop your backlog turning into a dumping ground.
ClickUp bundles docs, whiteboards, dashboards and sprints into one app. Why that breadth overwhelms scrum teams, and when a focused tool wins.
Do you need scrum as a solo developer or a two-person team? What is worth keeping, what is pure ceremony overhead, and how to run a light board on your own.
Scrum vs Kanban explained simply: how they really differ, when each one fits, whether you can mix them, and how to choose without overthinking the framework.
Story points explained without the jargon: what they are, why teams use them instead of hours, how to start estimating, and the mistakes that make them useless.
Scrumpy has an AI writing assistant on the board: turn rough notes into clear stories, dictate by voice, and teach it your team's style. Included.
Jira too complicated for your team? Here is why it feels heavy, what it really costs, and how to move to a simpler scrum tool without losing a single issue.
A practical sprint planning checklist and meeting agenda: what to do before, during and after, how long it should take, and a worked example you can copy.
If your scrum board forces horizontal scrolling or hides columns once you have too many, it is working against you. What a board should do instead.