Use the planning board

Select the Release Management > Planning Board tab.

The planning board enables you to visualize and manage the release backlog, as well as plan sprint backlogs.

It's provides you with a bird's eye view of your release backlog plan and progress, and assists your release strategy planning. The planning board displays all the release backlog items in a configurable grid. Backlog items are represented on the grid by tiles.

You can design the Planning Board according to your planning strategy, by selecting the properties that define the grid's rows and columns. For example, the grid columns could list sprints, and the rows – priorities. By examining how the tiles are distributed in the grid, you can evaluate where your high priority user stories are planned in the release.

In addition, you can select a property for a third dimension – color. Using the same example, if colors represent statuses, you can understand what progress has been made on the high priority stories in each sprint.

You can drag tiles around the planning board to dynamically change backlog item properties. For example, you can move a low priority user story to a later sprint, or you can even increase a user story's priority by moving its tile to a higher row.

Select from a number of preset combinations of columns, rows, and colors, or design a custom view.

Note: By default, the Planning Board displays only 200 items at time. To display more items, click Load More at the top of the page.

What do you want to do?

Click the Favorites arrow, and select a view from the Private or Public folder.

The following preset favorites are available in the Public folder:

Preset Favorite

Suggested Use
Release backlog life cycle by theme Track the progress of your product themes in the current release.
Sprint backlog planning by theme Plan release backlog items to sprints based on theme.
Release backlog life cycle by application Track the progress of your applications in the current release.
Release timeline mode by application Plan release backlog items to sprints based on application.
Sprint backlog planning by type Balance the allocation of user stories and defects to sprints and teams.
Sprint backlog planning by priority Plan release backlog items to sprints based on priority.
Sprint backlog overview by status Track the status of backlog items along the sprint timeline.

  1. In the Columns, Rows, and Color boxes, select the properties that will define the grid's dimensions.

    Besides the default properties, you can select also customized single-selection list fields.

  2. Click the Favorites arrow, and select Add to Favorites. Custom views that you save under the Public folder are available to all users.

By default, the Planning Board displays tiles for all the release backlog items. If you want to reduce the amount of tiles on the Planning Board, you can define a filter for user stories, defects, or both.

Expand the filter left sidebar, and select properties to filter by.

Use the Planning Board to gain a picture of the progress of the release plan. You can achieve this by viewing the amount of backlog items in each status.

Click Favorites. From the Public folder, select the Release life cycle by theme view.

Each column in the view represents a status, and the rows represent teams. You can review the overall status of the release, and assess whether backlog items can be redistributed between teams.

In addition, the user story themes are represented by colors. This enables you to identify the progress made on particular themes.

Use one of the following options:

  • Select a view that lists sprints and teams along the columns and rows of the planning board. Backlog items that are not planned to a sprint or a team are located in the No value boxes at the end of the sprints and teams lists. Drag tiles from the No value boxes to a sprint and team box.
  • Right click a tile, and select Planning.