Agile Boards
Agile Boards in YouTrack are designed to help teams plan, visualize and manage their work in an efficient manner, with support for both Scrum and Kanban processes.
Live Update
Agile Board in YouTrack supports real-time updates, meaning that all changes are reflected on cards on Agile board, regardless of where they are applied to issues. Move issues around freely, edit or modify them, and never waste your time on refreshing the page.
Scrum
Scrum Board
YouTrack's Agile Board gives you many ways to organize your process. You can use a board as a separate entity, where connections between issues and the board are not controlled by any custom field. In this case, issues must be explicitly added to the Sprint of the board. For example, you can drag an issue from the backlog, or create a new issue right on the board.
Alternatively, you can set up synchronization between Sprints and Versions, and use your Agile Board as another way to view the Issues list. In this case, the board is determined by a Fix version which defines a sprint on the board. In other words, Sprints are treated as Fix versions. You can also use a query to filter the cards on the board. When applied, all of the issues that don’t match the query are not removed from the board, they are just hidden from you.
Product Backlog
Create a product backlog to manage your epics and user stories. A backlog is a saved search that defines your plan for future product development. When you create a new board, YouTrack automatically creates a backlog which includes all the unresolved issues in your project(s) that are not yet added to the board. More backlogs can be defined as needed, based on your saved searches. It is also possible to change a saved search in the Backlog panel at any time.
Backlog Management
Prioritize your user stories by dragging them to the list, based on their priority and implementation order. You can manage issues’ custom fields and details, filter issues, add subtasks, and use search, shortcuts and commands directly in the backlog. Sprint labels will help you identify issues that belong to certain sprints.
Sprint Planning
Create and manage Sprints from the Board. Determine a Sprint goal to stay focused on the same objective with your team. You can choose to move all unresolved issues from the current Sprint to the next one and automatically add new issues created in projects to the current sprint. Easily plan your sprint by dragging user stories along with their tasks from your backlog to the board.
Working with Sprints
Create multiple sprints to effectively plan your work. You can find all the sprints created on the board, including those archived in the combo-box. Easily edit your sprints right from there: change the schedule, sprint goal or name, and archive or delete it. For example, if you want to archive your sprint, select it from the combo-box, click the Edit button and archive it. You can restore a sprint anytime you want.
Board Columns and Rows
Normally, you would use issue states to define the columns on the board. When configuring a board, choose only those states that you want to visualize on the board. For example, choose Open, In Progress and Done. However, the columns may be defined by any Enumeration field, such as Priority, Type, etc. You can also add a new custom field to define your own column state.
Group Tasks in Rows, or Swimlanes
Tasks can be grouped together by user stories, by defining swimlanes. Tasks inside a user story appear as cards on the board and can be moved inside the swimlane. Swimlanes and tasks have parent-child relationships. You can configure various issue fields to represent swimlanes, and all their subtasks will then be shown as cards. Define a swimlane by values of a certain field, and the cards will represent all the issues with that value.
Swimlanes Context
With even more flexibility in configuring the Agile Board, you can set any issue attributes as Swimlanes. For example, choose the Priority field and add any value to focus on important issues. Or choose the Assignee field to get an overview of each team member's individual tasks.
Swimlanes on Agile Boards based on tags
Agile boards are even more customizable, with an option to add swimlanes to the board based on the tags assigned to issues. With this option selected, swimlanes, or rows on board will include all the tasks related to topics marked with the same tag, and these tasks may be from multiple projects and have various dependencies between them.
Uncategorized Cards
Tasks that are not associated with any user story, such as critical bugs, can also be placed on the board and managed in the same way. A swimlane for uncategorized cards can be shown at the top or at the bottom of the board.
Burndown Chart
Get a clear view of your team's progress. A burndown chart comparing Ideal versus Real effort remaining can quickly tell you whether the team is on track for completing a sprint.
Burndown Based on Your Own Settings
Take full control of your Burndown. It's totally up to you to decide how and what you see on your chart. Whether you're estimating your tasks or not, or using time tracking, you can calculate the Burndown based on the swimlanes only, tasks only, estimation or work items.
Tune the Burndown settings to select the mode that you need at the moment. For example, if you want to see your sprint progress based on the total number of cards, create a chart based on the issue count.
Estimation tracking for burndown charts
Burndown charts can be added to the agile board to estimate your sprint’s ideal flow. Once the pre-work for your sprint is ready, and all the tasks have been added to it, click on the Start sprint button for the chart to perform estimations. You can use the burndown chart anytime during the sprint to compare the estimated burndown to the actual burndown.
Custom Query Calculations
Set up a query to filter issues that you want to include in the Burndown. For example, if you want to create a Burndown to see the progress for features, use the “#feature” query. You can also exclude uncategorized cards and swimlanes by using "has: {Subtask of}". This feature helps you verify that specific aspects of your development efforts are delivered on time.
Weekends on Burndown
Weekends are reflected on the Ideal burndown to let your remaining effort graph approach the ideal one. Your Burndown chart becomes more realistic, pausing the ideal process during the weekends.
Multi-Level Boards
Create an Epic board to track the overall progress of your project. Set epics as swimlanes and user stories as their tasks that move inside each swimlane. An Epics board provides a high-level overview that’s invaluable for your management needs.
At the lower level, create a Development board, with user stories set as swimlanes and their tasks inside. This board visualizes the team’s progress inside each sprint.
Kanban
Kanban Board
Easily create different columns representing the different stages in the pipeline. As you work on tasks, move them along the board.
Cumulative Flow
The Cumulative Flow chart lets you easily see how the work is flowing through the system, with potential bottlenecks highlighted. It shows how your tasks are distributed by different states at the moment. You can also set up a query to filter issues that you want to be included in the chart.
Limit Work in Progress
Define a maximum WIP (Work in Progress) for each column to monitor whether you have reached your maximum number of tasks and take control of your productivity.
Progress Indicator
Use the Progress Indicator to check your current board progress at a glance. It shows the amount of tasks on the board by states, and gives a clear view of the current progress and remaining work.
Apply Commands
Modify as many tasks as you need at once by using powerful commands, just like you normally do in YouTrack. For example, simply type: Major Assignee Carry.Parker to set major priority and reassign the selected tasks to Carry Parker.
Search Queries on the Board
Use advanced search queries to filter the tasks on the board, just like you normally do in YouTrack. For instance, you can filter all unassigned issues (#unassigned), or those assigned to yourself (for:me), or even filter unresolved critical bugs only (#bug #critical #unresolved).
Keyboard-Centric Board
YouTrack supports shortcuts extensively. Use handy key combinations to move the cards across the board; add, edit, and delete swimlanes and cards; switch between the board and the search box; show/hide the backlog; and much more!
Attachments on Agile Board
Add and edit attachments directly on the Agile Board. Simply drag one or more files to any card on the board. You can also download all of the attachments as a .zip file, edit the visibility, and attach files privately.
Ultimate Agile Experience
Multiple Boards
With so many Agile board features available, why stick to just one board? Create as many boards as you need and track your projects in every possible way—the sky’s the only limit! Create your personal boards or share them with the team or the whole company.
Pre-configured Boards
There are five kind of Boards available in YouTrack: Scrum, Kanban, Version-based, Custom and Personal. Each template is pre-configured depending on the Board type. For example, if you create a Scrum Board, you will get basic scrum settings ready for you, such as card, swimlanes, columns and rows and general settings.
Project Templates
When you create a new project, you may choose a project template with pre-configured settings. For a Scrum project, two boards, one for development and one for project management, will be created for you. Each board represents different relationships between issues, and differs in general settings. You can modify your project at any time to match your own objectives.
Column Visibility
Choose what you really want to see and stay focused only on the column(s) that matter for you. If the Board is personal, this option is private for you and does not affect any other users.
Merge Columns
If you have values that represent the same state in different projects and affect the amount of columns on the board, just merge them together. For example, if you use different values to represent "in progress" states (In progress, Working on it, etc.), combine them into one column.
Play Your Cards Right
Creating and Editing Issues
When you create or edit an issue on a board, various details are visible to you including edit custom fields, issue visibility, and an estimation value if time tracking is enabled in your project.
Drafts
Feel free to create multiple drafts on a board in different columns and swimlanes. YouTrack will save your draft even if you accidentally close the issue or your browser.
View Subtasks on the Card
Create subtasks of any issue represented by a card on the board. Subtasks will be shown on the card indicating its progress.
Color-coded Cards
Highlight your cards to visually distinguish them based on their Priority, Severity, or any other field. It’s up to you to decide which field values will be used to color your tasks on the board.
Card Assignee Avatars
Check who is working on which tasks at a glance. Each board card includes the avatar of the issue’s assignee to indicate who’s responsible for the task.
Four Levels of Detail and Two Modes
Decide how much detail you need on board cards, by choosing from four board views: Small, Medium, Large and Extra Large. These levels of detail are also available in a desktop or a TV mode.