Scrum Index Card Template for MS Word

If you maintain your scrum product backlog in an excel spresdsheet then you may find these templates useful. Hendrik Kniberg, the author of the excellent Scrum and XP from the Trenches produced an index card generator based on access. I didn't like having to rely on access and so I've produced templates for use with mail merge in MS word.

If you find these templates useful then please help yourself, they come as is with no support. Feel free to modify, redistribute, or do whatever you want with the templates.

I have only tested the templates in word 2003, however I do expect them to work with other versions.

How To Use

Installation

Unzip the template to C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Microsoft\Templates.
The templates assume that the data to be merged is held in a spreadsheet with column headings matching those in this sample. If you don't base your spreadsheet on this one then there are a few more steps in the merge to match the fields in the template with the data source.

Create New Document

In MS word create a new document from the file menu so that you get to choose which template to base the document on. Select the scrum index card template for a document with a single card per page or scrum index cards for an A4 sheet with four cards per sheet.

Using Mail Merge

Launch the mail merge tool from tools/Letters and Mailings/Mail Merge...

Click through selecting a merge type of letter and select to use the current document. When you get to step 3 of 6 selecting recipients use the Browse... option to find your spreadsheet.

Select your spreadsheet.

Select the table containing the data - if you are using the sample spreadsheet the Backlog$ table is the one you need.

Now select the individual backlog items that you want to print. If you want to automatically apply filters so that for instance you only print cards for stories of a priority greater than 10 then use the filters on the column headings.

Now click next until you get the option to print your cards.