11 Paid & Free Scrum Tools That Can Skyrocket Your Productivity

Scrum is the most popular and lightweight Agile framework that helps development teams operate in harmony and prioritize continual feedback for making sure that the product quality is intact.

Millions of professionals use the Scrum framework, including characteristics such as its ability to facilitate speed, communication and collaboration and helping development teams in accomplishing complex products within deadlines. 

Since it’s such an extensive framework, it is nearly impossible for the professionals to execute all the Scrum tasks manually, and this is where free Scrum tools come into the picture.

Agile teams use a couple of classic Scrum tools such as note cards, whiteboards and charts. If your Scrum team is also working remotely due to the pandemic there are a few Scrum tools that can help you in managing Agile projects seamlessly without draining your revenue. 

Source: Digite

Also, when used correctly, Scrum tools allow teams to launch their products or features faster and effectively, thereby promoting Agile methodology within Scrum project management software. 

Why Do You Need an Agile Scrum Tool for Your Organization?

Are you wondering why you need a tool for following the Agile and Scrum framework? Sure, Agile can use spreadsheets, MS projects or laying out all the tasks on a whiteboard. But the downside is that these examples don’t allow collaboration. They’re useful to gather and list requirements and keep track of iterations and reporting. To an extent, you can even track timelines and collect data about development efficiency. 

Source: QuickScrum

But using multiple tools makes it a highly inefficient process. On the bright side, there are many tools in the market that can integrate all functions of Agile into a single tool, resource or dashboard. A single coherent resource can manage burndown charts, product grooming, backlog prioritization and collaboration, among many other tasks. By keeping all information in one place, the stakeholders can know where to look and stay on top of their roles in the project. 

What Are the Benefits of Using Free Scrum Tools?

From coordinating the workflow to setting tasks and controlling the team’s performance and tracking deadlines, there are several benefits of leveraging free Agile Scrum tools. The key benefits of using free Scrum tools include: 

• Helping to run sprints by allowing you to customize the backlogs, divide epics into easier-to-work-on user stories and allocate tasks among many others
• Facilitating cross-team collaboration because, in the absence of collaboration, your Agile project management team can’t incorporate feedback properly for optimizing the end product or service.
• Enabling the Scrum master, product owner, and Agile team members to adjust the priorities, as and when required, by offering complete transparency and showing who is working on which task.
• Makes it easier to track project progress and promote retrospectives by giving the Scrum master and the product owner an idea of what specifically is necessary to launch the product.

11 Paid and Free Scrum Tools That Can Skyrocket Your Productivity in 2021

You can find numerous Scrum project management tools free in the market but choosing the best becomes a challenge. To make your job easier, we have compiled a list of 11 paid and free Scrum tools that can help you manage complex Agile projects efficiently. 

1. ScrumDo

ScrumDo is a powerful Agile work management platform that lets the Agile teams manage every project online. It is free for Agile teams having a maximum of seven people and if you have a bigger team, you can choose from three pricing plans available.

Source: ScrumDo

The pricing plans are:

• Small Team Plan – $ 8.99 per month for 10 users
• Business Plan – For 10 users ($59.99 per month or $5.99 per user per month) to 90 users ($593.99 per month or $6.59 per user per month)
• Enterprise Plan – For companies and agencies having more than 90 people

Automatic burnup charts, prediction functionality and Excel import and export are a few crucial features of ScrumDo. Using this tool, your team can embrace modern workflow management processes and transition from Scrum to Kanban to Agile at scale.

2. Scrumblr

Scrumblr is an effective web-based tool that is fundamentally a web simulation of Agile Sprint Board. It allows Agile teams to work together in real-time and proves convenient access when the teams are working remotely or don’t have a physical board. 

Scrumblr is extremely useful for retrospectives, and it’s one of the best free Scrum tools online. The intuitive interface allows you to place sticky notes that are available in three colors.

3. Jira

Jira is an intuitive Scrum platform for organizations of all sizes, from software organizations, business companies, IT corporations to small businesses and startups. It helps teams of all shapes and sizes to manage their workflow. However, Jira is better for established and bigger Scrum teams rather than smaller ones.

Source: Jira Software

Seamless sprint management, backlog grooming, integration with automation tools like SureTriggers, Zapier and GitHub and burndown charts are a few crucial features of Jira. Anyone can start using this tool at $10 per user monthly.

While Jira is a powerful and versatile tool with customizable features, several users feel that Jira can become overly complex for beginners. 

4. Yodiz

Yodiz is one of the easiest-to-use yet powerful free Scrum tools that aid in managing complex Agile projects. This customizable software comes loaded with advanced features such as board layouts and custom fields and lets you change board colors.

Yodiz is free for up to three users for unlimited projects but if you want integrations and apps, then you have to pay $3 per user per month. Usually, Agile teams choose the complete Agile solution of Yodiz that costs $5 per user per month.

5. VivifyScrum

Source: VivifyScrum

VivifyScrum is one of the most popular free tools for Agile Scrum project management and is the best for teams working with either Scrum or Kanban frameworks. It’s equally useful for small and large Agile teams as well as freelancers.

By using VivifyScrum, you can create your Scrum and Kanban boards and invite others to collaborate for sprints. Burndown charts, planning poker, and external integrations are some of the most useful features of this tool.

VivifyScrum has a free plan that allows an unlimited number of users, boards, and items, but there’s a premium plan that starts at $10 per feature monthly and has additional features.

6. Trello

Trello might look extremely simple, but it is a powerful Agile tool comprising cards that facilitate seamless project management. Cards can easily move on a Trello board to exhibit project progress, upload files from desktop, Dropbox, or Google drive, and leave comments to get immediate feedback.

Source: Trello

With the help of notifications, Trello reminds about significant events and comes with a free version, but if you have bigger teams, there are premium plans that start from $12.50 per user, per month.

7. ClickUp

ClickUp is one of the simplest and most intuitive free Scrum sprint planning tools, which was originally for internal usage, but now it will optimize Agile teams’ productivity. This tool can free project managers from a lot of tasks so they can focus on more crucial things.

Source: ClickUp

Seamless integration with other productivity tools, syncing important tasks with Google calendar, organized collaboration and reporting, tracking team’s capacity and milestones are some useful features of the ClickUp tool.

ClickUp comes with a free plan along with a free trial but if you want to get the premium version, the pricing starts from $5.

8. Targetprocess

Targetprocess is a unique, flexible, and visual, project management platform for embracing and scaling Agile software development. It is equally useful for both large and small Agile teams and provides a distraction-free synopsis of projects and then to scale up or drill deeper for details. 

Targetprocess offers integration and custom reports for more than 60 apps. It is free for teams with limitless users, but the number of entities’ limit is 500.

9. iceScrum

iceScrum is one of the most effective online free Scrum tools that accelerate visual management through virtual sticky notes. It offers a variety of features such as product backlog, sprint plans, release, dashboard and timeline views, team functionality and so on.

iceScrum comes free for a team with unlimited users, but just one public project is available in the free version. The pricing for premium plans starts at $8.90 per user monthly.

10. QuickScrum

Source: QuickScrum

QuickScrum is an intuitive collaboration and project management solution for Agile teams of all shapes and sizes. It has powerful insights, team velocity tracking, and backlog management features. For the project managers who want to implement the best Scrum methodologies for seamless Agile project management, this is the tool of choice. 

QuickScrum pricing begins at $3 per user monthly, which makes it one of the cheapest options.

11. ScrumDesk

ScrumDesk is a useful Agile project management tool that’s entirely transparent and user-friendly. It supports all Scrum ceremonies and is the best for small to mid-sized Kanban and Scrum teams.

ScrumDesk helps Agile teams improve through root cause analysis and retrospectives. It offers a free trial and comes at no cost for up to four users. The premium plan starts at a flat $9 per month.

How To Pick the Right Scrum Tool?

When you begin selecting an Agile tool from the options shared above, the inevitable question is, “Which tool is the best for your business?” 

Remember, selecting the right Scrum tool which supports your organization’s needs and methodology is crucial. Here are the five capabilities you should look for while choosing the free Agile Scrum tool to support your team and their Agile approach. 

• Facilitates collaboration and communication – Free Scrum project management tools should facilitate communication and collaboration between the stakeholders and team members. Be it marketers, developers or analysts, everyone can be a part of the conversation as the project moves from inception to delivery 
• Tracks history and accountability – Find free Agile sprint planning tools that allow you to look at the history to track the conversations, actions and deliverables 
• Searchable central storage – Rather than using several tools for the Agile process, have a single searchable Agile tool to support Scrum project functions. 
• Ability to scale – Find a free Agile Scrum tool online that has broad capabilities that multiple teams in your company can use. 
• Analytics – The best free Agile Scrum tools provide analytics to determine how much time individual tasks took to complete. Drilling down into data is critical in setting up successful future projects. 

Wrapping Up 

The best free Scrum tools help Agile teams in seamless project planning, facilitate complex portfolio and project management, create a transparent workflow, ease the collaboration and optimize productivity between the development teams.

If you want to try your luck in the Scrum niche, there’s no better partner than GreyCampus. Being the leading provider of Scrum Master training and certification, GreyCampus not only helps you gain expertise in Scrum fundamentals but also gives an in-depth knowledge of Scrum selling tricks, avoiding common Scrum mistakes and managing stakeholders.

Want to Master Scrum Framework for Agile Project Management? Sign Up for a Bootcamp Today!