Work in sprints
You can use sprints to schedule your work in intervals of time.
If your team hasn’t configured a sprint schedule, do that now.
Assign items from the backlog to the sprint
If you don’t have a backlog, here’s how to create a backlog using the backlog page.
From the backlog page, move the items that you expect to work on into the current sprint.
.png "Add an item to a sprint backlog")
That’s your initial guess at what you’ll be able to do in the sprint. Next, you’ll define tasks, estimate that work, and use your team’s capacity to make sure it fits in the sprint.
After you’ve run through a few sprints, you’ll be able to use forecasting to help with the initial list of items for the sprint, too.
Set the team’s capacity for this sprint
The capacity helps you make sure you’re taking on the right amount of work in the sprint. And, as you work day-to-day, you’ll be able to see if your team is on track.
Go to the capacity tab for the sprint and set the daily capacity for each team member.
.png "The team's capacity")
If you have days during this sprint where the whole team is off, set them so the sprint capacity reflects that.
.png "Set team days off")
Individual team members can enter their days off, too.
.png "Set individual days off")
If you assign work by activities when you plan your sprint, allocate individual capacities to an activity.
.png "Set hours per day and activity type")
Break the items down into tasks
In the sprint backlog, add a task.
.png "Add a task to an item in the sprint backlog")
Give the task a name, and estimate the work it will take.
.png "Add a title and an estimate of hours")
As you add estimated tasks to the items in the sprint backlog, you can tell how each task uses up your capacity.
You can see whether your team, as a whole, has the capacity to complete the work.
.png "Review the capacity of the team")
If you assign work to individuals when you plan the sprint, you can see whether each individual has the capacity for the work assigned to him.
.png "Review the capacity of individuals")
Or, if you assign work to activities, you can make sure each activity is within capacity.
.png "Review the capacity of activity area")
The colors of the capacity bars help you understand whether you still have capacity remaining, whether you are over capacity, or whether you are simply looking at the total work without any reference to capacity.
.png "These colors help you distinguish capacity")
Use the task board to update tasks day to day
Move tasks on the task board to reflect their current state.
.png "Move items to the appropriate column")
You can assign a task to a specific person.
.png "Assign the task to a specific person")
Update the remaining work by either using the drop-down list, or typing a specific value.
.png "Update the remaining hours")
Notice how the remaining work for each column changes as you change the amount of remaining work, or move tasks from one state to another.
If you discover work during the sprint, add a task to the backlog item it supports by choosing the plus sign.
.png "Add a task directly on the task board")
Review overall progress by opening the burndown chart for the sprint.
.png "The minature chart expands to show detail")
Forecast your upcoming sprint
Once you’ve completed a sprint or two, you can use the velocity chart to forecast how much of your backlog you’ll finish each sprint.
From the backlog page, open the velocity chart.
.png "Click the the velocity chart in the upper right")
In the chart, you can see how many story points (or whatever you use to estimate your backlog) your team has completed in the previous sprints.
.png "Velocity chart showing 32 and 30 points completed")
Go back to the backlog page, turn forecasting on, and enter your predicted velocity.
.png "Changing velocity changes forecast lines")
Forecast lines show how much work your team should be able to complete in future sprints.
Try this next
- You can try storyboarding your ideas
Dig deeper
Do you want to include bugs as well as backlog items on your taskboard? Add bugs to the task board or backlog
Do you want to receive an alert when a task changes? Set up personal status alerts
Do you want to learn more about working in sprints from industry experts? Try reading the following whitepapers: Sprint Planning and Effective Sprint Retrospectives.