ScrumDesk v.3.12.2: Task types

Task types

Agile teams are multidisciplinary teams so you should have an analyst, developer, tester, or even operation role in your team. And everybody needs to find out an appropriate card on the kanban board quickly.

Start! has supported colors for subtask from the first version. The intent of this feature was to highlight the type of subtask and recognize them easily. An experience from our consultancy team moved this idea even further. In the latest version, we are introducing task types.

To assign the type:

1. click any task card,
2. click the type in side view,
3. choose the type from the list.

The color of the card will be changed at the same time so your board will be consistent.

The following types are predefined already:

• Task
• Analyze
• Development
• Test
• Deploy
• Document

Do you need to change it? Add a few others? Change the color? Just click Manage task types to customize types.

BTW. Task types can be assigned in Story templates as well. So you can add new stories with task types and correct color coding with just one click. No other tool is able to do it so simply.

Editable business value

Business value should be a driver for product owners for prioritization. On the other side, it is probably the most questionable thing in agile product management. How should you estimate the business value? Well, every product owner estimates the value in different ways and even in different units.

1. Some product owners use just relative comparison of the business value.
2. Other use relative comparison with planning poker scale. This was available in Start! so far.
3. Some teams track real business value expressed in terms of money.

Because approaches are so different, customers asked us to provide the possibility to enter a business value directly. So we combined options 1,2, and 3 together. Now click business value to edit it immediately. Or just choose a relative value from the list as before.

Sprint report

Sprint report has been introduced in the previous version and based on the feedback it is a very valuable feature for your sprint reviews sessions. But you asked few changes, so we improved it slightly.

Sum of hours

The last line in the timesheet report displays summary values now.

Estimated vs. spent

New column Delta displays a comparison of estimated time with time spent on backlog items.

• Value highlighted with red color indicates slower progress than expected.
• Green color indicates faster progress than expected.

Print

And finally, you can print this report by clicking on the PRINT command accessible in the top menu.

Filter

We were asked to add new filter options:

1. Filter unassigned cards
2. Filter by backlog item type

Minor changes

• [Change] Command Add task moved to the end of tasks list in side view.
• [Change] To improve readibility we removed italics when editing values.
• [Change] Upgrade of backend services to improve performance.

What we build in v3.13

• Configuration of spent time tracking when card is moved to done.
• Import from JIRA.
• You will see sprint backlog size and spent time in burn down chart.
• The backlog will be finally a list of uncompleted work.
• New approach for product backlog management that follows the best backlog management practices.
• An indication of backlog items that you will not be able to finish till end of the sprint.
• Filtering, sorting and grouping by custom fields.
• Context menu for backlog items to improve usability and speed of use.