Using a Board

What is a board?

A board displays issues from one or more projects, giving you a flexible way of viewing, managing and reporting on work in progress. There are two types of boards in GreenHopper:

  Scrum board — for teams that plan their work in sprints. More about Scrum
  Kanban board — for teams that focus on managing and constraining their work-in-progress. More about Kanban

You can use a board that somone else has created, or create your own — you can create as many boards as you like. Creating a new board is simple:

1. Choose which project(s) the board will display, using JIRA’s Query Language (JQL)
2. Layout status columns
3. Set Swimlanes — based on assignees, parent/sub-task issues, or JQL queries of your choice
4. (optional) Set Quick Filters

Accessing a board

To view a board,

1. Log in to JIRA.

2. Click the Agile link's down-arrow in the top navigation bar, then select your preferred board from the resulting dropdown menu.
   
   If this is your first visit you will be prompted to create a new Board.

3. Your board will be displayed.
4. Click Plan, Work or Report, depending on what you need to do.

Plan Mode

Screenshot: a Scrum board in 'Plan' mode (click to enlarge)

In Plan mode you can:

• Prioritise the Backlog — Create issues for your backlog, rank and estimate them, and drag-and-drop to add them to a sprint.
  Right-click selected issues (in GreenHopper 6.1.2 and later)  to add them to a sprint, send them to the top/bottom of the backlog, view them in the JIRA Issue Navigator or perform Bulk Operations.
• Estimate Stories — You can use the 'J' and 'K' keys to move through issues in the backlog and get details on the right-hand side of the screen. Plug in your estimates or story points as you go.
  Note that, by default, the Story Points field is only available to issues of type 'Story' or 'Epic' — you can change this as described in GreenHopper JIRA Configuration.
• Create Sub-Tasks — To break a story (issue) down into implementable chunks, go to the sub-task tab (click the folder icon) to view and create sub-tasks.
• Organise via Epics — Group related stories into an epic. Click an epic (in the leftmost panel) to view only the stories that belong to that epic.
• Plan Versions — Assign issues to upcoming versions. (To do this, you need your administrator to enable Release Planning in GreenHopper Labs.)
• Plan, and Plan Again — When you're happy with the stories for the iteration, start a sprint and the stories will move into Work mode. While a sprint is active in Work mode, you can still plan subsequent iterations in Plan mode (click Add Sprint), but you won't be able to start them until the active iteration is completed. (You can, however, drag and drop an issue in Plan mode onto the active sprint.) Note that you can only start (or complete) a sprint if you have 'Administer Projects' permission for all projects that match the board's filter.

An issue will only be visible in Plan mode if:

• the issue matches the board's Saved Filter (see Configuring Filters); and
• the issue's status maps to one of the board's columns (but not the 'Done' column).

Tab legend

Tab	Shows you ...
	The issue's details: Summary, Story Points and Remaining Estimate fields (editable) Status, Component, Labels, Affects Version and Fix Version, plus any fields you have added Reporter, Assignee, Date Created, Date Updated Links (plus a button for quickly creating new links)
	The issue's Description field.
	Any comments on this issue.
	Any files attached to this issue.
	A convenient summary of the issue's sub-tasks (plus a button for quickly creating new sub-tasks).
	Any test sessions for this issue (if you are using Bonfire).
	Any commits for this issue (if you are using the DVCS Connector).

Work Mode

Screenshot: a Scrum board in 'Work' mode (click to enlarge)

Screenshot: a Kanban board in 'Work' mode (click to enlarge)

In Work mode you can:

• Work on Issues — Choose the highest ranked issues in the 'To Do' column and drag them to the 'In Progress' column. (See Transitioning an Issue.) As you complete each issue in the 'In Progress' column, drag it to the 'Done' column.
• Release a Version — Click Release to create your new version and mark it as 'released' throughout JIRA and GreenHopper. (See Releasing a Version (Kanban).)

Note:

• each column maps to one or more JIRA statuses (see Configuring Columns).
• resolved issues are shown in strike-through font, e.g. DEMO-1.
• sub-tasks are shown slightly indented, with their parent issue key shown above.
• for Kanban boards, the dots at the bottom of each issue indicate the number of days the issue has been in its current column. Hover over the dots to see the total number of days.

• column constraints apply to the total number of issues in a column, regardless of whether some issues are currently hidden because a Quick Filter is in use.

• swimlanes can be based on criteria of your choice. Swimlane issue counts are affected by Quick Filters, that is, issues hidden by a Quick Filter will be excluded from the swimlane count.
  Press "-" to expand/collapse all swimlanes.

• for Kanban boards, you can specify a Work sub-filter, which refines the issues returned by your board's filter (see Configuring Filters). By default this sub-filter includes issues with no fix version or unreleased fix versions. So when the Release link is used to release a Kanban version, the completed issue will no longer be shown in the Done column.

• an issue will only be visible in Work mode if:
  
  • the issue matches the board's Saved Filter (see Configuring Filters); and
  • the issue's status maps to one of the board's columns; and
  • the issue is in an active sprint.

Report Mode

The following reports are available:

• Control Chart
• Burndown Chart (for Scrum boards only)
• Cumulative Flow Diagram
• Epic Report (for Scrum boards only)
• Sprint Report (for Scrum boards only)
• Velocity Chart (for Scrum boards only)
• Version Report (for Scrum boards only)

Note that the reports are board-specific, that is, they will only include issues which match the board's Filter.