Use the Task Board

Track the progress of your team's backlog items and tasks during a sprint. Items on the task board are listed in order of their rank.

  1. Open the Release Management > Task Board page.
  2. Make sure the correct sprint and team are selected.

Tip: The task board continues to load as you scroll down the page. To reduce the time it takes to load, use a filter to limit the items displayed.

What do you want to do?

If you want to load all items at once instead of as you scroll, select Load All above the grid. Clear the Load All check box to return the default behavior.

Your selection remains for the duration of your current Agile Manager session.

The task board initially displays all the backlog items and tasks planned for the selected team and sprint. If you have many items, the Task Board continues to load as you scroll down the page.

To reduce the number of items displayed on the task board, Agile Manager provides you with the following filtering options:

Display backlog items and tasks assigned to you

In the Assigned To box, select your user name. The following backlog items are displayed:

  • Backlog items assigned to you, even if none of its tasks are allocated to you.
  • Backlog items with tasks assigned to you.

Tasks assigned to other users are grayed out.
Display tasks assigned to users on other teams If a backlog item was reassigned to you from another team, its tasks may still be assigned to members on the original team. To display such tasks, in the Assigned To box, select users listed on the bottom part of the list, below the members on your team.
Toggle user stories and defects Use the User Stories and Defects check boxes to display only user stories or defects, or both.
Display specific backlog items Enter text in the filter box, located on the top left of the page. Only backlog items that include the search text will be displayed.
Hide done backlog items To clear done backlog items from the task board, in the Backlog Items in Status box, deselect Done.
Display backlog items without tasks To display only backlog items that have no tasks, in the Assigned To box, select Items Without Tasks.
  1. Define a filter for the items you want to export, and click Export to Excel .
  2. In the Export Backlog to Excel dialog box, select the additional item(s) you want to export.

The displayed items are exported to an Excel workbook. Tasks and acceptance tests are listed on separate tabs.

During the sprint, you may realize that additional tasks are required to complete the user story or defect.

Right-click an item in the Backlog Item column, and select Add Task. You can drag tasks around to organize them, such as in the order they should be performed.

Fill in the following details for each task:

Field

Description
Task A detailed description of the task.
Assignee The user assigned to the task. By default, the owner of the backlog item is selected. You can assign the task to any member of the team.
Estimation

Tasks are measured in hours, as opposed to backlog items that are estimated in story points.

Specify the number of hours you estimate it will take to complete the task.

Note: Administrators set default task estimates on the Workspace > Settings configuration page.
Color Category Optionally, assign the task to a color category. For example, use color categories to identify development, QA, and documentation tasks.

Before starting a task, estimate the number of hours of effort you think the task will require. As you progress, report time you spent working on tasks to provide a reliable picture of your sprint work effort.

The planned and actual time invested in tasks is also used in the team's sprint burn up and burn down graphs.

  • Task times are measured in hours.
  • Actual time refers to the sum of invested and remaining time.
Report time spent on a task

Click the Remaining work icon , and click the Decrease remaining button .

As a result, the task's Invested time and the backlog item's Actual hours increase by the same amount.
Report time spent on a task, while leaving the amount of remaining work unchanged

Double-click the task, and increase the Invested value.

As a result, the backlog item's Actual hours increase by the same amount, and the Remaining amount remains unchanged.
Modify a task's time estimation

Double-click the task and increase or decrease the Estimated value.

Note: Modifying the task's time estimation replaces the original value. Graphs that analyze the Planned and Actual effort use the current Estimated time value.

To review changes made to a task after it was created, right-click the task and select Show History. Filter the records according to the user who made changes, or a changed field.

Only changes made in October 2016 or later are available. Changes made beforehand are not reflected in the task history.

To change the task status, drag the task to the In Progress or Completed column. Alternatively, right-click the task and select Mark as Completed.

When all the tasks defined for a backlog item are completed, you are prompted to change the backlog item's status.

To apply the same status to all backlog items when their tasks are completed, select the Always use this status check box.

Tip: To change the status applied to backlog items when all their tasks are completed, click Ctrl+1, and select or type Reset 'Don't show this again' Selections. The next time you complete all of a backlog item's tasks you will be prompted again to select a status.

A backlog item is usually closed automatically after all its tasks are completed. For more details, see Change a task status and close a task above.

To manually set a backlog item to Done, right-click the backlog item and select Set to Done. By setting a backlog item to Done, all its tasks are automatically set to Completed, and the remaining hours are transferred to the invested hours.

Tip: At the end of a sprint, all user stories should be closed. If you invested time in a user story, but not all its tasks and acceptance tests are completed, split the story. Remaining effort and non-passed acceptance tests are moved under a new user story, which you can assign to a future sprint. A link is automatically created between the original user story and the new one.

For further details, see Split a user story.