Managing a project with Quick Planner

Create a work board to manage your own work items.

1. In the Board name field, type Work board. Create a preconfigured board by accepting the default; if you want to create your own board, clear Use preconfigured lanes. Click Work Board, and click Create.
2. A new work board is created and depending upon which project template your project uses, lanes appear preconfigured. For example, if your project uses a scrum process template, then the lanes are:
   • Open
   • In progress
   • Closed
   • Verified
3. To change the settings for your board, in the left navigation pane, hover over the board name, click the View properties icon . Click Board settings & Sharing. On the board settings page, you can:
   • Edit the name of the board: Change Work board to My work board. As you type the new board name, the update appears automatically beside the board name in the left navigation pane.
   • Add a tag or tags to the board: In the Tags field, type chat. The tag #chat appears in the left navigation pane.
   • Share this board: You can share your board with another project, another team, or other individual team members. For this exercise, leave the sharing blank.

   To return to the board, click Close or click your board name in the left navigation pane.
4. You can choose the number of lanes that you want to show at one time, and the number of lanes available depends upon the size of your display or monitor. Click the lanes icon , and select the number of lanes you want to show in your board, up to a maximum of five lanes. To add more lanes, click the 'Create a lane' icon and you can add a new unconfigured lane.
5. You can pin one or more lanes. Pinned lane remains in view, even when you scroll through the other lanes. This allows you to drag work items easily from one lane to another. To pin a lane, click the Pin the lane icon .

1. In the Open lane, click the Create a work item field, and type a summary for the first work item: Create a simple chat page for our site. Click the Filed Against icon , and select your team. Click Create to create the work item. The default work item type is Defect :
   
2. Add more parameters to your task. Click the Type field, and select Story. Click the Priority icon and set the priority to High.
3. Click the Tag icon and type website in the displayed field. Click website, and click OK. A tag can help you group related work items. For example, you can filter to view only the items that have a certain tag.
   
4. Click the story's title field. You can modify more attributes from the drop-down menu. The Filed Against icon is disabled if there is no value that is selected. An asterisk is shown next to the icon if it is a required attribute. If this attribute is defined as a required attribute and the user does not provide any value for it, the work item creation fails and an error message is shown to the user.
   
5. Type a summary for the next work item: Incoming messages are not reaching other chat participants.
6. Hover over the icons under the summary.

   

   Note: You use these icons to set the work item attributes. You can also change the attributes later.
7. Use the icons to set these parameters for the work item:
   • Set the type to Defect .
   • Set the severity to Major.
   • Set the filed against to a category associated with your team.
   • Add a tag named messages.
   • Set the priority to High.

   Tip: Notice the new text after your summary. When you set an attribute, the text code for that attribute is added after the summary.

   

8. When you're finished, click Create.

1. In the left navigation pane, click and select New Board.
2. In the Your board name field, type Plan board. Create a preconfigured board by accepting the default. Click Plan Board, and click Create.
3. A new plan board is created that contains lanes representing the iterations for the project. Depending upon the iteration structure of the project and what iteration you selected when you created the board, the lanes might be:
   • Incoming Work
   • Product Backlog
   • Sprint 1
   • Sprint 2
   • development
   • stabilization
4. To change the settings for your board, in the left navigation pane, hover over the board name and click icon . Click Board settings & Sharing. On the board settings page, you can:
   • Edit the name of the board: Change Plan board to My plan board. Note that as you type the new board name, the update appears automatically beside the board name in the left navigation pane.
   • Add a tag or tags to the board. In the Tags field, type chat. The tag #chat appears in the left navigation pane.
   • You can also hare this board with another project, another team, or other individual team members. Leave the sharing blank.

   To return to the board, click Close or click your board name in the left navigation pane.
5. You can choose the number of lanes that you want to show at one time, and the number of lanes available depend upon the size of your display or monitor. Click the lanes icon , and select the number of lanes that you want to show in your board, up to a maximum of five lanes. To add more lanes, click the icon and you can add a new unconfigured lane.
6. You can click to pin a lane, or several lanes, so that the pinned lane remains in view as you scroll through the other lanes. You can now easily drag work items from one lane to another. Click the pin icon, on the Incoming work lane.

1. View the content in the Incoming Work lane to evaluate new work items. In this example, work items are already created for the team. They are grouped by severity so that you know which tasks are most important. To rank work items in a lane, you must group the lane by Ranked List.

   

2. You can send incoming work items to your backlog or to another iteration by dragging the item to the desired lane:
   
   Alternatively, click Status:New to resolve it.
3. You are able to select several work items and drag them to a different lane to change their state. You are required to confirm these state changes:
   

1. Click Product Backlog, and then click the Create a work item field.
2. Type a summary for the next work item: As a user I would like your site to have a chat page.
3. Use the icons to finish setting the attributes. Set the filed against category , make yourself the work item's owner , add a website tag , and set the priority to Medium. Click Create.
4. You can set or change attributes of existing work items in several ways. For example, you can right-click the summary of your story to open the work item editor in a separate tab.

   

5. You can change or set any work item attribute from this editor. You can change most of the attributes from the Overview tab. If you want to add a file, create a relationship with another work item, or add a subscriber, click Links. You can explore the other tabs later. When you share work with a team, add more details about a work item to the Overview tab in the Description field.
6. In the Priority field, change the priority to High. Then, click Save to capture your changes.
7. Go back to the Backlog. The navigation between the Work Item editor and the Quick Planner views is not seamless. You can use the direct link to go to the Quick Planner view or use the menu options that are provided in the component drop-down list. You can use the Back button but this reloads the view. You can also open the work item in a separate tab.
8. Click the Priority: High icon, and set the priority to Medium for the story. If you have not assigned an owner for the work item, you can click the Owned By icon, and assign an owner to the work item.
9. Note the ID number of your story. For example, the story ID in the image is 92. This number is unique to your project and helps you keep track of each work item. If you know the ID for a particular work item, you can easily find it by using the search function above the view list or you can add relationships to it.
10. Click the Parent icon in your story's attributes.
11. Click the Create a child work item field, and then type Configure a chat server using node.js.
12. Type *task to assign the task type. The Type drop-down menu is displayed when you type the asterisk (*).
    Note: If you prefer to keep your hands on the keyboard, you can enter most of the attributes by typing their text code instead of using the mouse.
13. Set the Filed Against value, and type these attributes:
    • @:<yourUserID>
    • #server
    • $high

    Click Create.
14. Click the Backlog lane. Notice that a plus sign displays beside the story. Click the plus sign to confirm that your new task is nested under your story. Notice that the task remains on your ranked list. This behavior lets you see the tasks that are associated with a story, but you can still rank the tasks individually.
15. You need a few more work items to complete this project. Add the following work items and attributes by using the method that you like best. You can assign or modify attributes even after creating the work item.
    • As a user I would like to be able to log into your chat with my Facebook or Google+ account. #login $high
    • Add a child to the story:
      • Click the Parent icon in your story's attributes.
      • Click the Create a child work item field, and then type Integrate OAuth to the chat site. *task #login #website $high.
16. Click the Backlog view, expand your parent work items, and your backlog should look like it does in this image:

    

1. Ranking a list establishes priority order. To view the work items in ranked order, you must group your lane by Ranked List. Click the Lane settings icon . In the Group byfield, select Ranked list. A ranked list shows the work items in a numerical order:

   

   Notice that the last item in the list in not ranked.
2. Collapse the parent items, and notice how each work item's rank is not ranked. You can easily change this status. To rank a work item, drag it on top of the first unranked item in the list. You cannot drop items between two unranked items. For example, drag the Create a simple chat page for our site task to the top of the list, its rank changes to 1.

   

   

3. You can also rank a work item by clicking in the Rank column, typing the number, and pressing Enter:

   

   A ranked list shows the numerical order.

   Tip: If you have work items in the Recently Created section, you can drag them to the Ranked List section to rank them.
4. Multi-level ranking enables you to rank work items at all levels. You can rank the parent work items, and then you can rank the children within each parent work item. For example, if a parent work item is ranked 1, then the children of that parent work item are prefixed with the rank of the parent item, such as 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, and so on. You can update the rank for items by dragging items into the list or on to other ranked items.

   

5. Now that you have ranked the work items, assign story points to the stories. Click 0 pts next to each story, and select 20 pts from the drop-down list.
   Note: In agile projects, story points are a team-determined scale reflecting the effort that is required to implement a story. To review the child items, you can expand each story by clicking the plus icon.
6. Before you finish triaging your tasks, finish assigning work items owners.
7. Click the Owner icon for each of the unassigned work item, and select your name from the drop-down list. If you are working with other team members, you can use this method to assign related work items to them.
8. You should create time estimates to ensure that you place an appropriate number of stories on a sprint. Click the expand icon to expand the Integrate OAuth to the chat site work item's drop-down menu, and select Estimate: Unassigned from the drop-down menu.

   

   Tip: Remember to review your story points and work item owners when creating time estimates.
9. Set the duration to 3 days, and click OK.
10. Assign 3-day estimates to your defect and remaining tasks.

1. In your plan board, select the lane for the iteration that you want to plan. The lanes that are shown are for the parent iteration and the selected iteration, and when you scroll to the right, the next two sequential iterations. You can see the time remaining for the sprint below the lane title.

   

2. Click the title of the task from the backlog lane and drag it to the sprint lane. Drag the rest of the work items to the sprint lane, in ascending order, by ranking.

1. Click the Open lane.
2. For the Configure a chat server using node.js task, click the Status icon , and then click Start Working from the menu.
3. Notice how this item moves from the Open lane to the In Progress lane.
4. Same as the Iteration Planning view, you can drag items between lanes. Drag the Integrate OAuth to the chat site task to the In Progress lane.
5. As you work on your tasks that are in progress, update the number of hours that are spent on the task. Find the Integrate OAuth to the chat site task, and click in its title bar to expand the drop-down menu. Use the Time Spent option to show that you've spent 16 hours on the task.
6. Find the Integrate OAuth to the chat site task. Click its Status icon , and select Complete from the menu to close the task.
   Tip: You can complete this process from the Team's Work view, too. You might find the ability to assign hours and complete tasks useful during your daily scrum meeting.
7. The Quick Planner feature makes it easy for you to track your sprint's work as you complete planned tasks. It's also easy to create and address new work items.
   1. In the Open lane, click in the Create a work item field and make three more work items:
      • As a user, I'd like your chat site to look good on my phone. #mobile $low
      • Test site on mobile devices and optimize Bootstrap and CSS files to improve performance. *task #mobile #website $low
      • The server handles the requests too slowly. *defect #server $high major
   2. Go to the Incoming Work view to triage these new tasks. Use the Triage to Backlog icon to send all the work items to the backlog.
   3. For instance, if you see a defect that is important. Click Iteration Planning, and drag the defect from the Backlog lane into the Sprint 1 lane.
      Tip: If you’re leading a team, you would want to triage new work items in the Incoming Work view and the Backlog view during your sprints.

1. Click the Filter work items by keyword field. The available filters to refine your search are displayed:

   

2. Click a filter to populate the field. For example, click Priority, and then click High. The work items with the priority set to high display.
   Tip: For more examples on filtering work items, hover over the filter icon and you see filter option examples: