A group of people using a kanban board and a whiteboard to manage a project.
Image: LIGHTFIELD STUDIOS/Adobe Stock

Scrum is an agile project management process that helps teams structure and manage their workflows, and it’s one of the most popular project management tools for agile development.

Scrum includes the Sprint, a time-boxed event where a team focuses on a single goal, which is typically an increment or iteration of a product. If you need agile development added to your development process, Scrum and Scrum Sprints will be an absolute necessity.

SEE: Hiring kit: Project manager (TechRepublic Premium)

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What is Orangescrum?

Orangescrum is a project management platform that offers everything you need to manage projects of all sizes. You’ll find tools such as Dashboards, Kanban, Reports, Tasks, Time Logs, Bug Tracking, Resource Management, Templates and Status Workflows.

Another feature found in Orangescrum is the Task Group, which makes it easy to break a project into smaller, more manageable modules or phases.

Say your project has teams dedicated to the front-end, back-end and UI design: To help improve the efficiency of this project, you might create a Task Group for each of those teams. Each task group has a name, associated project, description, estimated hours and date range.

Thanks to the date range feature, your Task Groups could even be more granular. For instance, you might have a Task Group for a specific front-end function, which must be done within a certain date range and require X number of hours. Alternatively, maybe the back-end has a database component that must be broken out into its own group.

The Task Group serves a very important function, and Orangescrum makes it very easy to create such a group. Let me show you how.

What you’ll need to create an Orangescrum Task Group

To create a Task Group, you’ll need a valid Orangescrum account. You can use either a free or paid plan, as Task Groups are available to all. I would suggest you start with a Free plan.

If Orangescrum is right for your teams, upgrade to one of the three paid plans, which are:

  • Startup: Serves up to 10 users for $8/month.
  • Professional: Price depends on the number of users. For example, a plan for 11 users costs $36.60/month.
  • Enterprise: Quote available upon request. Call (408) 907-4166 for details.

Once you have your Orangescrum account set up, you’re ready to create a Task Group.

How to create a Task Group in Orangescrum

The first thing to do is log into your Orangescrum account. Once authenticated, you should see your Dashboard (Figure A).

Figure A

The Orangescrum dashboard.
The Orangescrum dashboard.

Click New at the top left corner of the Dashboard. In the resulting pop-up, click Task Group (Figure B).

Figure B

The Orangescrum New popup menu.
The Orangescrum New popup menu.

A new pop-up window will appear (Figure C) where you must fill out the details for your Task Group.

Figure C

Creating a new Task Group in Orangescrum.
Creating a new Task Group in Orangescrum.

Complete the details and click Save.

How to use a Task Group in Orangescrum

Orangescrum doesn’t quite make it obvious how Task Groups are used. The only way to view Task Groups is from the Dashboard, where you’ll see a list of your Task Groups along with the associated tasks (Figure D).

Figure D

Task Groups as seen in the Orangescrum Dashboard.
Task Groups as seen in the Orangescrum Dashboard.

Click on a Task Group from the Dashboard to be taken to the associated project where you can view tasks.

A word of warning: After clicking the Task Group option in the Dashboard, when I went back to the Dashboard, the option was missing, and I’ve yet to find a way to add it back. Even after adding a new task group or adding tasks to an existing group, the Task Group entry fails to appear in the Dashboard. Strangely enough, Task Groups is the only feature that has vanished from my Dashboard, and I’ve yet to stumble my way through this issue. Is this a bug or a feature?

Another method of working with Task Groups is found in the Create Task window (Figure E), where you can assign a task to a group.

Figure E

Assigning a task to a Task Group in Orangescrum.
Assigning a task to a Task Group in Orangescrum.

Using Task Groups for project management

Even with the strange behavior and lack of documentation, Task Groups could be an effective way to help organize your tasks.

I would suggest to Orangescrum that they add the ability to easily view task groups and better manage them. As it stands, this feature seems to be poorly executed, and what could be a brilliant addition to project management seems more like an afterthought.

Even so, Orangescrum is a very good option for project management. Give it a try and see if it doesn’t become your go-to for all types and sizes of projects.

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