If you’re developing software, there’s a good chance you’re assigning tasks in iterations or sprints. With monday dev's "Tasks" board, you can streamline your workflow and plan out your sprints quickly and efficiently. Let's check out how you can seamlessly track your active sprints, assign tasks with ease, oversee your sprint backlog, and keep everything connected to your epics along the way!

 

How to add the board

This board is added automatically to your account when you first install the monday dev product. If you've accidentally deleted it or want to add a second tasks board, you can always add it manually to your product. 

Click "+" in your left pane, and then select "Scrum Team" to add the entire Scrum Team folder including the tasks board, and 4 others!

 

Basics of the board

The monday dev "Tasks" board is specially designed with agile software development in mind. The board's groups are designed to represent the tasks that make up your sprints, including a sprint name, timeline, goals, and even an active indication. Let's take a look at how we've set up the board for you. 

• Groups

The groups on this board are categorized according to each sprint, with one group representing the backlog of unassigned tasks and one group representing the current active sprint. 

 

• Items

The items on our board represent all tasks that comprise each sprint. 

 

• Columns 

Columns allow you to record specific details of your sprints' data.  Within the columns we've added for you, you can fill in the information necessary to decide when we need to tackle each task and who we should assign them to. 

 

Here are some key columns included in the "Tasks" template:

1. Owner - This People Column allows the team to assign the team member responsible for each task. The People Column is a really helpful way to create accountability and to help our team visualize workload distribution and avoid over-allocating tasks. 
2. Estimated SP - We can use this Numbers Column to mark how long each task is expected to take in story points so that we can properly allot tasks to each sprint. The column settings can be customized to show different units, such as days or hours, and we can add a summary to calculate total time or effort within a group. 
3. Status - This Status Column helps us track where everything in our board stands at all times! We've also added several other Status Columns and have customized the labels to indicate priority, type of task, and role.

 

 

Start a new sprint

Once all your upcoming tasks are inputted into your board, you can really see the big picture. You can take a look at your backlog and begin assigning tasks to team members and organizing them into sprints based on parameters such as developer assigned or priority.

 

When you're ready to create a new sprint, click the drop-down arrow beside the "New Task" button, and then select "New Sprint": 

A window will pop up prompting you to define the sprint. Give it a name, select start and end dates, and record all of your goals for this sprint. When you're finished, just click "Create Sprint" and you'll see your new sprint appear as the top group on your board. 

Now your team can take a look at your backlog and grab tasks to tackle in this sprint by dragging and dropping them into the new sprint group.

 

 

The 3-dot menu at the top-right corner of your group's header will take you to a pop-up card loaded with all critical information pertaining to your sprint. View all updates, check out the sprint's activity log, or all files in one place. 

 

Start, reset and complete sprint

• Start sprint

To start the next Sprint, click "Start" in the sprint's group header. You'll always see an active indication with a green light in the current sprint's group's header right beside the sprint's start and end dates. 

You will also see a green check mark in the "Active sprint?" column for each item that has been assigned to the current sprint. This is especially useful when the tasks are not grouped by sprint. Let's check out how that looks in the following section. 

• Reset sprint 

If you started your sprint prematurely or would like to reset a sprint, select the three dots in the upper right corner of the sprint, and select "reset sprint". The start date of the sprint will automatically change to the date at the time of reset. 

• Complete sprint

When you've finally come to the end of a sprint, it's time to hit the "Complete" button to mark it as a completed sprint and remove the active indication!

If you have any incomplete tasks, you'll be given the option to either keep them in the completed sprint or to move them to another group! You can select any group on your board that's not a past sprint, and click "Complete". 

 

Monitor progress with a burndown chart

The best way to monitor all aspects of your sprint's progression is by using a burndown chart! With monday dev's burndown chart, you can track the progress of your sprints compared to what was planned based on the sum of work days, hours, story points - you name it! Let's take a look. 

 

To create a burndown chart, click the "Burndown" button beside the status bar of your active or completed sprint.

 

 

The line chart is drawn along the dates of the active sprint on the x-axis and number of story points on the y-axis. The green line represents the ideal "burn rate" planned projection of estimated effort in the given timeline, while the blue line indicates the remaining estimated effort. Each data point marks a change in the sprint's scope and the height reflects the change in total effort during the sprint. 

 

 

Activity log

Team members can use the activity log for more information regarding any of the data points on your burndown chart! 

 

Click the "Activity log" tab to the left of your chart to open the left pane. Here, you'll find an activity log organized in chronological order with most recent events at the top descending. Each item on the activity log represents a change to one of the items in your sprint. The heading is the change made, and below, the team member who made the change is listed beside the name of the item. 

 

Prioritize your sprints with Kanban

Prioritization is a key factor involved in sprint planning. Our Kanban View promotes transparency by allowing team members to see the status of every task at all times. Its simple structure and flexibility helps teams utilize their resources most effectively. This view shows items in cards categorized by status — Ready to start, In Progress, Waiting for review, Pending Deploy, and Done.

 

Unify communication with GitHub

We can use the GitHub Integration to unify communication and deploys in one place. When committing changes based on a task on our board, we can '#' the item ID in the commit message and use our native GitHub Integration to have the commit appear as an update on that item!

 

View your data differently

With 9 different views already prepared for you, your team will be able to pull data, check progress, and tackle your backlog as efficiently as possible. Let's take a look at the different views you have to work with: 

• All Sprints - this Main Table View is the default view, and displays all of your data in table form, grouped by sprints. 
• Main Table - another table view showing the full list of tasks in one group.
• Kanban - as explored in a previous section, the Kanban View shows all tasks laid out in cards according to working status.
• My Tasks - here you can find all tasks that have been assigned to you in the "Owner" column. 
• Sprint Planning - this dashboard is prepared with widgets to help you get the full picture of the tasks in your backlog so that you can plan your upcoming sprints efficiently.
• Daily - this dashboard has filtered widgets to show you how things are going this sprint.
• Backlog - This Main Table View is filtered to display everything in the backlog. 
• Active Sprint - A table view showing only the current sprint.
• By Epic - This Table View groups all of your items by the epic they belong to. 

And there you have it! We hope we've helped you supercharge your workflow to smash through your sprints at lightening speed! 

 

 

If you have any questions, please reach out to our team right here. We’re available 24/7 and happy to help.