New Agile Board Concept in YouTrack 7.0

Valerie Andrianova

We are proud to introduce a brand new Agile board in YouTrack 7.0. We’ve completely revamped it to improve usability, design and concept, and most importantly, the way it’s used to visualize your team’s progress and track personal tasks.

Welcome the brand new Agile board

If you’ve already tried the new version, the usability and design changes are pretty obvious. However, I would like to explain the new concept in more detail.

Previous Agile board concept

Agile board is not new to YouTrack; it’s been with us since YouTrack 4.0. This functionality has always been popular among our customers. And for a while now, we’ve been carefully analyzing how it is used and what is missing.

Let’s look at the main principles of the old board and highlight its advantages and ‘pain points’:

• A board is defined by a search query. Everything that fits the search query automatically appears on the board.

Advantage: The board is just another view of the Issue list. The concept is very clear.

Disadvantage: There is no way to explicitly add an issue to the board, if it doesn’t match the search query. Not flexible enough for cross-project boards and personal task boards.

• Sprints are tied to Fix version values. When you define the Fix version value, the issue is added to the corresponding sprint automatically.

Advantage: All issues added to a certain Fix version appear on the board automatically.

Disadvantages:

1. The same set of Fix version values must be shared across multiple projects if you want to add several projects to the board.
2. You cannot configure your own personal sprints, as the Fix version values are used across the whole project, or even several projects.

• Unscheduled sprint (used in Kanban) is treated as ‘no fix version’ value.

Advantage: Every unresolved issue without Fix version value is added to the board automatically.

Disadvantage: Default backlog is defined as: unresolved issues without fix version value, which matches the Kanban board query. In this case, the backlog is the same as the board and is not available from the board.

New concept

The tricky part in creating the new concept was to keep the advantages of the previous model while eliminating its disadvantages.

• Issues are now explicitly added to the board, so you have much more control over its contents. Click “+” and enter the following command: Board name sprint name, and then click Apply.

However, an option to add new issues to the board automatically is also supported, as is synchronization with various issue fields.

• Sprints are now independent (per board) attributes. You can include any projects in the board, without synchronizing their Fix versions; and you can create as many personal boards as you need. Sprints are only tied to the specific board and are not related to issue fields.

However, we’ve supported an option to link sprints with issue fields, so you can still use Fix version values to add the issues to the board automatically.

• Backlog is now separated from sprints. It’s still created based on a saved search, which can be treated as a full-featured Issue list right from the board, i.e. you can apply filters, commands, add issues, reorder them, apply shortcuts, change hierarchy, etc, and drag issues to the board and back to the backlog. You can even change your backlog by choosing another saved search on the fly.

When you create a new board, YouTrack suggests a default backlog, with the following search query behind it: project: name has: -{Board name} #unresolved. It contains of all unresolved issues in the project(s) that are not added to the board.

Try the new Agile board!

With the new Agile board concept in YouTrack 7.0, we aim to take your agile experience to the next level. We hope it will help you stay on top of your team’s activities and your own tasks, and save your precious time for more development. Track smart, fast, and get updates in real time!

Try YouTrack 7.0 today – download a new version or sign up for InCloud trial. It’s free for up to 10 users. We wish you pleasant tracking and look forward to hearing your feedback about the new Agile board!

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