7 min read

Guide

Whether you're a developer, designer, or product manager—monday dev is for you. If you work in the software domain, you know that it takes an innovative, solution-oriented workflow for your team to really prosper. Let us provide the management system you need for your tech talent to really shine. monday.com's new monday dev product gives teams everything they need to plan, build, and launch products in one easy-to-use, intuitive workspace. 💻

What is monday dev?

Our product supports an agile project management system and scrum methodology, allowing development teams to be connected to other departments, like Sales, Customer Success, and Marketing—all while keeping their teams synced and aligned. They can collaborate together on product roadmaps, sprints, release plans, customer feedback, backlogs, and much more within the same Work OS.

The monday dev product includes four folders containing interconnected boards, dashboards, and workdocs. Let's review each of the folders and their contents in the following section to learn how to optimize our workflow with monday dev Enterprise.

Planning

The "Planning" folder is focused on product management and planning and includes everything from setting goals and detailed planning all the way to client feedback and competitive analysis.

Within this folder, you will find a "Quarterly Goals" board where you can set high-level expectations and targets. The goals recorded in this board are directly connected to your "Product Roadmap" board, where you can assign some of your goals into the quarter they'll be tackled in. The PDR (Product detailed requirements) template can be filled in for each product and attached to the file column in the Product Roadmap board.

The "Feature Requests" board is connected to the CRM sub-folder we'll cover in the following section. We can collect all of the requests from clients in one concentrated place and track the qualifying and working status of the product. The qualifying products will be connected to the "Feature Releases" and "Product Roadmap" boards. Finally, the "Competitor Analysis" board is a great place to keep track of similar products developed by direct competitors and to help your team stay relevant.

What's included in the Planning folder?

Quarterly Goals - For managing the Product Manager's goals and high level objectives. The goals on this board usually come down from an exec-level product plan and helps product managers focus on business outcomes.
Product roadmap - This board is for product to plan what high-level features will be done each quarter. It consolidates the big features planned for each quarter with a direct link to quarterly goals.
Competitive Analysis - This board will list features that describe the softwares's abilities and will compare these abilities to those of their competitors in order to help product managers prioritize features.
Feature Requests - This board is for managing feature requests from clients. Client facing teams can add their requests here and select the account from the accounts board. For each request we can see how many accounts asked for it and what the total ARR is. This will help us prioritise our product requests.
PDR Template - The PDR Template doc is a template product managers can use to create their product design requirements. They can add one to the product roadmap board for each of the features.

Spotlight on the Product Roadmap board

The "Product Roadmap" board was created with product managers in mind, helping them plan which high level tasks will be done in each quarter. It summarizes all major features planned for each quarter and links each to the corresponding quarterly goal.

Each item in the board is a feature, and they are divided in to groups by the quarter in which they will be worked on. Product managers can add features and candidates and set their priority and score based on the RICE model. These factors will be reviewed to help assign each feature to the right Q (Quarter) using an automation.

A sleek Gantt View has been added so you can zoom out and see the big picture in a visual timeline. We've also added a filtered Main Board View to show only the features being worked on in the current Q.

CRM

An "Accounts" and a "Deals" board make up the "CRM" sub-folder within the "Planning" folder. These boards seamlessly link CRM and product planning. This sub-folder consists of:

Accounts - This board is used as a database of client accounts and lists feature requests coming from relevant clients.
Deals - This board contains new deals in the pipeline. The purpose of this board is to link the deals to the feature requests to help product manager prioritize features also based on the value of deals that are affected by it.

The features recorded in these boards are connected to the "Feature Requests" board showing all relevant details to help product managers prioritize features added to the roadmap.

Tip: If you are already using monday.com as a CRM, you can link your own boards here instead!

Scrum Teams

The Scrum Teams folder contains all of the different boards your scrum teams will interact with on a day to day basis. From daily tasks to bug busting, these boards are the most dynamic and frequently visited by your dev team members. Each scrum team has a folder containing the following 5 boards.

Show me what boards are in this folder.

Epics - This board is for managing the progress of your epics, with each epic connected to the relevant tasks in your Sprint Management board to track overall progress.
Sprint Management - This board is where the team will manage their day-to-day sprint tasks.
Sprint Metadata - This board contains the metadata of the sprints from your Sprint Management board.
Retrospectives - This board is to record and carry out sprint retros. Gather topics during the sprint and have your team members vote to find the most relevant feedback. Track your action items and improve for the next sprint.
Bugs Queue - This board is for monitoring and resolving bugs and is connected to the Sprint Management board to pull bugs into sprints when necessary.

The Epics board shows you a high-level overview of your epics, while the Sprint Management board lets you manage your day to day tasks. Your team can zoom out to monitor your sprints with the Sprint Metadata board, and you can look back at your sprints with the Retrospectives board. Finally, manage bugs using your Bugs Queue board, and connect it to your Sprint Management board to keep all tasks in one place.

Spotlight on the Epics board

The "Epics" board lets you zoom out to track and manage your epics. The epics are divided into groups according to the quarter that they will be tackled in as well as one collective backlog group. The columns help outline the epics with a description, owner, timeline, priority, and more. Each epic is connected directly to the individual tasks in the Sprint Management board as well as the related features in the Product Management board.

Quality Assurance

The Quality Assurance folder contains all boards related to QA processes to help you deliver high quality products every time. Track all current projects with one high-level "QA Projects" board, and manage a low-level "Test Cases" board day-to-day. This board is a template which can be used regularly to create a "Test Plan" board for each QA project. The "Defects" board is a log for any defects found during testing, automatically linking them to the "Test Plan" board and the "Sprint Management" board. Finally, there is a "Test Plan" workdoc to outline the test plan.

Which boards are in the Quality Assurance folder?

QA projects - This board is used to manage all the upcoming QA testing projects. Each project is linked to the relevant epics that will be tested. A testing plan workdoc can be attached to each of the projects and a link it to the relevant Test Plan board.
Test cases - This board contains all the test cases and is also saved as a template to be duplicated as the Test Plan board for each individual QA project.
Test plan doc - A workdoc used to describe and outline the test plan.
Defects - This board is to log any defects found during the testing. It is linked to the Test Plan board and to the Sprints Management board.

Spotlight on the QA Projects board

The QA Projects board is at the core of the quality assurance workflow we've created for you. Each item is a QA project, and they are sorted into groups by the Q they belong in. The projects are outlined with an owner, a timeline, a Test Plan workdoc, and a link to the corresponding planning board can be attached, as well as an execution Status Column for tracking.

Let's review the steps that take us from the beginning to the end of our QA workflow, sparking from our QA Projects board:

Once a project has started, you will manually change the status to "Working on it". This action will trigger an automation creating a new "Test Plan" board from the Test Cases template.
After cleaning up and customizing the Test Plan board to suit this specific project's unique needs, the project will be managed and tested right here on this board from beginning to end.
Any defects found during testing can be created as a new item in the "Defects" board and linked using the Connect Boards Column.

Note: To ensure this workflow is functioning smoothly, make sure that your "Test Cases - Master" board is saved as a template, and the integration is set up as described.

General folder

In addition to the previously mentioned folders, we've also added a general folder with other useful templates and resources.

Show me some other boards and dashboards that will make my workflow more efficient!

Internal Release Notes Doc - This workdoc acts as a template to help you write and format internal release notes. It includes all details required to outline the feature release and can be attached to each feature on the Feature Releases board.
Feature Releases - This board contains all current and upcoming feature releases. It is used to communicate with other teams within your organization so that they can be properly looped in to your dev team's plans and so that they can communicate plans with clients and accounts.
Incident Report - This board contains all ongoing and previous incident reports and the necessary details to allow you to manage them and take action.
Cross-Team Dashboard - This dashboard aggregates data and analytics across all of your teams. Its all set up and ready to go, reviewing quarterly goals, estimated SPs vs actual SPs per team, current sprint progress reports, and bugs and incident stats.

Integrate external platforms into monday dev

We know that teams juggle work on several different platforms to execute projects when working in the software domain. Our integrations feature allows you to seamlessly connect monday.com to external platforms. This is done by using predefined integration flows that we've created for you to choose from. Consolidating your work has never been easier!

Screen_Shot_2022-01-17_at_15.57_1.png

See our most popular software development integrations

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

monday dev for Enterprise