Agile project management is an iterative approach to delivering a project throughout its life cycle. Agile project methodology breaks projects into small pieces. These project pieces are completed in work sessions that are often called Sprints. Sprints generally run from a few days to a few weeks.
Unlike the traditional, waterfall project methodology that follows a linear, sequential approach, the main advantage of Agile is that takes a flexible approach, letting teams adjust as they go. Typical examples of where Agile project methodologies are commonly used are in software/product development or onboarding processes/activities.
For more information on the differences between Agile and Waterfall (standard) Projects, please see Inspire Planner Projects - Agile.
Please note:
To create and manage Agile Projects in Inspire Planner, you must first enable it in Inspire Planner. Please see Agile Projects - Admin Guide.
See below for what is included in this help article. You can click on the specific topic to jump to it.
This section will walk you through how to create an Agile project in Inspire Planner.
Agile Projects allow you to manage Tasks in a Kanban board. You are able to define the Kanban statuses you would like to use for a Project and map it to the equivalent Task status and % complete. This section will walk you through how to define Kanban statuses and mappings for your Project.
The backlog is a list of Tasks that a team may deliver in order to achieve a specific outcome. These tasks can be new features, enhancements, bug fixes, infrastructure changes or other activities.
With Agile Projects, Tasks can be created and edited either from the Kanban board or from the Backlog. This section will show you how to create and edit tasks within the Backlog.
There may be instances where you need to break down a large Task (such as an Epic) into smaller Tasks (typically user stories). In Inspire Planner, you can create an Epic and then create each user story under it as a subtask. This section will walk you through how to create SubTasks.
A Sprint is a short, time-boxed period for completing a set amount of work. This allows the team to focus on a set of Tasks that need to be completed within a timeframe. Sprints generally run from a few days to a few weeks. Tasks must be added to a Sprint for you to see them in the Kanban board. This section will walk you through how to create and edit Sprints for your Project.
Once you've created Sprints, you can now add the Tasks that are planned to be worked on within each Sprint. This section will show you how to add Tasks to Sprints.Please note:
You must first create Tasks in backlog before you can add them to a Sprint.
This section will walk you through how to assign Tasks to resources for Agile Projects.
When assigning Tasks, you can choose to either manually assign Tasks one at a time within the Backlog or the Kanban Board, or you can also automatically assign Tasks using Project Teams and Roles.
When a Task is assigned to a resource, a related Salesforce Task is created. The assigned resource can choose to update their assigned Salesforce Tasks or they can also choose to update their Tasks directly in the Project, provided that they have been granted "Editor" (read/write) access to the Project itself.
This section will walk you through how to navigate the Kanban Board for Active Sprints for Agile Projects.Please note:
For a task to display in the Kanban Board, you must first add it to a Sprint.
At the top of the Kanban Board are the Kanban Statuses you defined from the Settings page.
Each Task is displayed as a card within the Kanban Board. At the bottom of each Task card are several icons that indicate the Task Priority, let you assign the Task to a Sprint, open the Project Task record, log time via Time Tracker, post in Chatter, view the Task Details or assign/unassign the Task.
At the top of the page, you will see different options for filtering. You can filter Tasks by Sprint, Task Name or Assigned Resources.
At the top right corner, you can apply a grouping to Tasks. For example, you may want to view Tasks grouped by the assigned resource, the task type or the Sprint.
To remove the grouping, select "No grouping" from the grouping options.
This section will walk you through how to update the status of a Task. With Agile projects, you update the Kanban status of your Task which will then drive the Task Status and % Complete based on the Kanban Settings defined for the Project.
The Kanban status of a Task can be updated from any of these areas:
This section will show you how to update the Kanban status of Tasks in the Backlog.
This section will show you how to update the task status within the Kanban board.
This section will show you how to update the status of Salesforce Tasks related to Agile projects.
Simply open your Salesforce Task. You will see the Kanban Status path at the top. Click on the Kanban Status that applies to the Task. Then click on Mark as Current Status.
For Salesforce Tasks belonging to Agile Projects, you will need to update the Kanban Status using the Kanban Status Path instead of updating the Task Status. The Kanban Status is what drives the Task Status and % Complete based on what is defined in the Project Settings.
You can enable Time Tracking for Tasks belonging to Agile Projects. When time tracking is enabled for an Agile project, users are able to log time spent against tasks. This section will show you how to enable time tracking for an Agile Project.
When time tracking is enabled for an Agile project, users can log time spent on Tasks. This section will show you how.
Resources can log time against Tasks from any of the following areas:
Logging time against Salesforce Tasks and via Time Tracker tab is the same as how you’d typically log time against Tasks assigned to you for Waterfall (standard) Projects (For more information, see Logging Time with Time Tracker). As such, this document will only cover how to log time against Tasks either from the Backlog or from the Kanban Board.
This section will show you how to log time spent on Tasks in the Backlog.
This section will show you how to log time spent on Tasks in the Kanban Board.
Components can be used to group or categorize tasks. For example, you may want to group all the tasks related to a specific feature or function. Components can make it easier for you to report on a group of tasks.
This section will walk you through how to create components for Agile projects in Inspire Planner.
Releases represent points in time that can be used to schedule how features are rolled out to your customers, or to organize work that has been completed for a project.
This section will walk you through how to create Release in Inspire Planner.
This section will walk you through how specify components, fix and affected versions for a task. A version is another name for a Release. This allows you to define which version (or release) is impacted and/or which version (release) the User Story (or Task) is a part of.
Reporting on Agile projects is to come. In the interim, you should consider adding a filter in your reports to exclude Agile Projects and Tasks.
There is a Project Type field on Projects that you can use for filtering. Waterfall (standard) Projects will have a Project Type = Waterfall. Legacy Projects may have a Project Type of NULL and needs to be considered as well.