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 Tasks 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, select Dev templates and then Scrum Team to add the entire Scrum Team folder, which includes the Tasks board.

 

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 the board is set up:

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 you need to tackle each task and who you should assign them to.

 

 

 

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, 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. Click on the menu, then on Sprint overview to view all updates, check out the sprint's activity log, and 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.

 

Reset sprint 

If you started your sprint prematurely or would like to reset a sprint, select the three dot menu 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.

 

How to end a sprint

To end a sprint, you can choose to mark it as Complete, as shown in the section below. Alternatively, you can delete a sprint if you no longer wish to see it on your board. Keep reading to learn how.

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. 

 

Delete a sprint

To delete a sprint from your board, click the three dot menu in the sprint's header and then click Delete sprint. 

If you have any tasks still in the sprint you wish to delete, you will be prompted to move them. Use the arrow to open up the drop-down menu containing all of the groups in your Tasks board. Choose a group and then click Move tasks and delete to continue.

 

 

Monitor progress with a burndown chart

A great way to monitor all aspects of your sprint's progression is by using a burndown chart. With the burndown chart, you can track the progress of your sprints as compared to what was planned based on the sum of work days, hours, and story points.

To create one, click the Burndown button beside the status bar of your active or completed sprint.

 

Agile insights

Agile Insights is a board view with built in charts available in the Widget Center of the dev Tasks boards that provide critical visibility into action sprint performance. The charts include:

• Velocity chart - with this chart you can track your completed work per sprint over time to identify trends and forecast future performance.
  
  
• Planned vs. unplanned chart -  with this chart you can analyze the distribution of work between planned and unplanned tasks to assess planning accuracy and identify areas for improvement.

 

Prioritize your sprints with Kanban cards

With monday dev's Kanban View you can see tasks in the active sprint categorized by status. Kanban cards make it easy to see an overview of all your work at every stage. This view shows items in cards categorized by status — Ready to start, In Progress, Waiting for review, Pending Deploy, and Done.

 

Click on a card for a more detailed view of each item. You can customize the cards to suit your needs by dragging and dropping cards to easily rearrange them from one column to another. 

You can also filter your Kanban view by sprint, so you can keep track of tasks from previous and current sprints all in one convenient place.

Unify communication with GitHub

You can use the GitHub Integration to unify communication and deploys in one place. When committing changes based on a task on our board, you can add '#' to the item ID in the commit message. 

Additionally, use the integration to have the commit appear as an update on that item. Check out all of the GitHub integration templates available at the Automation center.

Sprint automations

As you incorporate automations into your workflow, you can also implement specific automations created for your sprint management. With Sprint automations, you'll be able to transform sprint data into valuable insights.

As of now, there is one template that you can already use, but we are always working on adding more in order to help you automate and simplify your workflow. To access Sprint automations, click on the three dot menu at the top right of the board as below. 

Click on sprint automations, which will take you to the Automation center. Here you will see the available template and be able to implement it in your workflow.

 

 

Item Creation Form

When items are more substantial and contain many attributes, you might want to fill in items using a form rather than through column by column. You can use the item creation form, which will allow you to add a new item in an efficient way.

To use the item creation form, click on the three dot menu on the right side of your screen. Click on Settings, then click on Enable item creation form.

 

Once it's enabled, you can add items to your board with the form. To use it, create a new task and fill out the form as you need.

 

You can also add the form to your views. Click on the plus sign icon at the top of your screen and select Explore more views. Search for "form" and then click on Open in board.  

To disable the form, go back to Settings and then click on Disable item creation form.

 

 

View your data differently

With various different views already set up for you, your team will be able to pull data, check progress, and tackle your backlog as efficiently as possible. You can view all of the different views options by clicking on the plus sign icon on the top left of your screen as below.

Browse Board view options in the dropdown menu and click on Explore more views to see even more options. We're always adding more, so make sure to keep an eye out for new view options.

 

 

 

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.