Using project boards - Jira Tutorial

- [Instructor] In this video, we'll discuss visualizing work using project boards. We will describe the importance of visualizing work. Describe common workflows, differentiate Jira boards and workflows. Describe the purpose of an issue status field. And configure board columns. We'll start with visualizing work. Visualizing work goes way back in history. And a to-do list is a simple example of an effective way to visualize work. It's effective because it reminds you of what you need to do. It focuses you on a specific set of tasks. You can set priorities by arranging the list in order of priority. And you can visually track your progress by checking off the items as you accomplish them. Another way to visualize work is using a project board. A principle of agile projects is to visualize the work. A board is an agile tool used to visualize and manage work. On the left, we see a manual board using a whiteboard and sticky notes. And on the right, you see more of a digital project board, as you would see in Jira. Another way to visualize work is with reports and dashboards. And Jira will automatically update reports and dashboards, as your team accomplishes work. Why visualize work? To easily see the work of the project. This allows anyone to see the true, current state of the project. Oftentimes if the project's work is not visualized, you don't realize that the project is way off track. This organizes and focuses the team. The team only works on tasks on the board. We also visualize work to manage things. Using a board, it's easy to add and prioritize the work of the project. And it's easy to update the work items as you make progress. You also visualize work to improve the team's way of working. For example, using a board, you can visually identify problems, such as too many issues in a certain column. Next, we will discuss workflows. The setup columns of a board represent a workflow, also known as a process for completing the work of an issue. Workflows are broken down into statuses or steps. In this example, you see a board representing the workflow of a project team. The team has decided to have a backlog column, a selected for development column, and in progress column and a done column. As the issues are being worked on, they are moved to the appropriate column. As an example of a workflow, let's look at how a typical restaurant will handle the ordering and delivery of food. The two main performers in this workflow are the wait staff and the cook. In the first step of the workflow, the wait staff takes an order from a customer. The wait staff then adds the order to the cook's queue. When the cook is ready, they take the order from the queue and begin preparing the order. When the order has been prepared, the cook adds the food to the delivery queue. When the wait staff sees that the food is ready, they deliver it to the customer. This is a simple, common example of a workflow. Boards and workflows are closely related. in Jira, a team works using a board. And the board structure is defined by an underlying workflow. We could take the restaurant workflow that we just showed, and model it on a board in Jira, as shown below. Next, we will discuss Jira boards and workflows. Earlier we created a project, which automatically creates boards. You can also create additional boards at any time. This allows you to use multiple boards, showing specific issues for your projects. Every project in Jira automatically has an associated workflow behind the scenes. The status field for each issue must be set to one of the workflow's statuses. In this example, we can see that this issue currently has the status of backlog. But we could also change the status to select it for development, in progress or done. Boards are a view of issues arranged by status. Moving an issue changes the value of its status field. Next, we'll discuss configuring board columns. Here's a project board, where we've added a review column. This is because the team has decided that issue should be reviewed before they're moved to the done column. In Jira, you can configure the board to match your team's desired workflow. Once you have added the review column and its associated status to Jira, users can set the status, just as if it was an out of the box status. Here's a review of what we've discussed in this video. A project board is a two dimensional way to visualize the work of a team. In Jira, a workflow is often represented using a project board. Project board columns usually map to the status field of issues. Board columns can be added or removed to match the team's desired process.