MANAGEMENT YOGI: November 2025

Sunday, November 09, 2025

Agile on the Fly: Mastering Real-Time Sprint Operations with MS Project Agile (1)

A Sprint is a mini-project within a larger Scrum project, and it's usually timeboxed for two to four weeks. Though timeboxed, a number of things can change within these weeks. In fact, adjustment of a Sprint in progress is the norm, not the exception.

In an environment with rapid changes (see here) in requirements and technological uncertainties, a number of areas such as scope, resources, risk, and even business priorities may change. Agile/Scrum, after all, is all about change. In fact, one of the principles in the Agile manifesto states: Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer’s competitive advantage.

Note: The content of this article has been taken from Mastering MS Project Agile course. See here. It's world's only hands-on, in-depth course to master MS Project Agile.

For a project executed in Agile mode, one can have the following:

Addition, removal, or modification of work items within a Sprint, i.e., changes to the Sprint Backlog.
Refinement of Release Plan (see here for release planning), i.e., change in features for the Sprints within a Release.
Refinement of the (Product) Backlog (see here), i.e., addition, removal, movement, or replacement of backlog items, which can be features or stories.
Rolling-wave planning (see here) for upcoming Sprints, as the current Sprint draws to a closure, among others.

In this article, we will specifically learn how to adjust a Sprint which is in progress. We will see the following real-time Sprint operations:

Activate/Inactive Operation
Delete Operation
Add Operation
Modify Operation
Move Operation
% Complete Change Operation

If you’re working hands-on with MS Project to manage your Scrum project, these operations are vital to know. So, let's start with our Current Sprint State.

Current Sprint State – Timeline View

The current situation for our Sprint is shown in the Timeline view of MS Project Agile. Our Sprint is of two weeks duration from September 11, 2023 to September 24, 2023.

As shown in the above figure:

There are 3 items to be delivered: Login to the online trading system, Create a new user, and Edit an existing user, which are 50%, 50%, and 10% complete, respectively.
The Sprint event of Sprint 1 Planning is 100% complete, along with four Daily Scrums. These are indicated with a tick mark for the events.
Our status date is September 18, 2023, which is one week after the Sprint begins on September 11, 2023.

As we proceed, we will perform several operations. These are important to know if you are really working in a Project with multiple Sprints. As any real-world Agile practitioner would tell you, all these operations may happen.

However, before you proceed, there are important instructions you need to know before starting, which are mentioned in the below video [duration: 2m:38s].

Next, let's us see our current Sprint board to understand the status date and various workflow items available in respective workflow states.

Current Sprint State – Current Sprint Board

The current situation for our Sprint is shown in the Current Sprint Board view.

As shown, several items are either complete (shown with a tick mark on the Cards) or progressed as on the status date, i.e., one week into the Sprint.

The % Complete of features and Scrum events for the entire Sprint can be seen in the below Current Sprint Sheet view. You have to add this column.

As shown above:

The features Login to the online trading system and Create a new user are 50% complete, whereas the feature Edit an existing user is 10% complete.
A number of Daily Scrums are complete.
The Sprint Planning event is also complete.

Now, we will proceed with various operations.

Performing Activate/Inactivate Operation

When you try to inactivate a task in any column state, except in the Sprint Backlog state, MS Project software won’t allow it to function! The reason is simple – you can’t inactivate a work item, which is activated and in progress.

A work item (or task) can be inactivated by going to the Task tab, then Schedule group, and using the Inactivate command. It’s highlighted in the below figure.

Now you may be wondering how to inactive such a work item. You have to take it back to the Sprint Backlog state to inactivate. This can be done either in the Current Sprint Planning Board or the Current Sprint Planning Sheet view.

As you can see, the work item is inactivated because of the column state (Sprint Backlog), and the % completion.

Performing Delete Operation

While you can’t inactivate an in-progress task, you are allowed to delete it. You can do so by selecting the work item in the column (workflow) state, right-clicking and using the Delete Task command. This is shown below.

But then the MS Project software will pop up a soft message for you, unlike the hard message shown for inactivation we saw earlier.

As shown for the selected feature item of Edit an existing user, when the delete command is pressed, a message pops up. This message wants you to confirm that you really want to delete it.

If you proceed, the work item will be fully removed from all the views. In other words, the backend database completely removes the work item. Hence, be careful!

Performing Add Operation

This is another operation that MS Project Agile practitioners use. While scope addition during the Sprint is not encouraged, it’s very likely to happen in the real world. Even though you may not want your scope to expand, new tasks related to a feature might come up anyway, and those must be added.

You can add a new task by going to the Current Sprint Sheet view, right-clicking, and using the Insert Task command. Notice that as you add a new work item, the default Board Status used will be Sprint Backlog.

You can also add the new work items using the Gantt Chart view or the using the New Task command of the Current Sprint Board view. After you add a new work item and associate the resources (see here) to it, it can be properly visualized in the Current Sprint Board view with the needed fields. This is depicted below.