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Agencies – Team Task Management
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If you are looking to manage the tasks of your team in an efficient way, the following example is for you. It outlines how you can set up several boards in your workspace for different parts of your process.
To do so, this workspace contains 2 boards – Team Backlog and Team Sprints.
For the sake of this example, we are talking about a marketing team. However, the same workspace structure can be used for any team out there.
Prioritization and Planning with Kanban
The team’s process here is divided into two stages. The first one is prioritization and planning. For this, the team uses a board called Team Backlog. The board stores all of the team’s plans and ideas on what could be done in the future.
If a team is set on the item being done at a specific date, this item has a due date. While items that are flexible are not assigned any due dates yet.
Rows
The board is divided into 3 rows that specify what is the type of items it holds. This way, the team can navigate the backlog more easily and find what they are looking for quickly.
The 3 rows in the example are as follows:
- Content
- Campaigns
- Website
Statuses
The Team backlog also contains several statuses that define the progress of each item. All of the new items are put into the ‘New work items’ status and then moved up to priority columns as the team decides their importance.
- Backlog
- New Work Items
- Prioritized Work
- P3
- P2
- P1 (Move to Sprint)
The team in the example holds a planning meeting at the beginning of every Sprint and decides which items are the most important and ready to be moved into the Team sprints board.
Prioritization and Planning List
For those looking for a little more details in their item planning. You could switch over from Kanban to List view on the same board.
By doing so, you are able to see all of the same items and their details listed next to each other. Moreover, here, you are able to see custom fields to help you sort items and define what is the most important.
In the example below, we see the same items as before, however, this time a custom field RICE scoring is also displayed. This helps the team decide which items should be taken on next.
Execution
Once the team decides it is time to execute the items, they are moved into the Team Sprints board. This board is all about tracking the progress of each item, thus its structure is different.
This is how you can quickly move 2 or more items from one board to another.
Rows
In the Team Sprints boards, each row visualizes a different Sprint. This way, the team can always check what was accomplished previously and what is planned next.
In the example below, you can see 3 sprints – Sprint Week 42, Sprint Week 43, and Sprint Week 44.
Statuses
The statuses represent the progress of each item planned for the sprint. The exact setup depends on the process of the team and can be expanded as it changes.
- Input
- Sprint Backlog
- Work In Progress
- In Progress
- Ready for Review
- Output
- Completed
Moving Multiple Items
Each item can be moved individually or from the quick action menu.
However, it is more efficient to move multiple items using the multi-select tool.
Timeline View
While working on Kanban boards is very convenient in the day-to-day setting, you may need to visualize tasks and projects on the Timeline to get a better sense of the schedule and estimation. For this, open the Timeline view.
Here, you can see all of the boards of your workspace in one place. Furthermore, you can filter to see just specific boards and specific rows that are of interest to you. If you choose to view dependencies, you will also be able to see them between different boards to get you the full context of the project.
Workload View
Another important aspect of managing the tasks of your team is reviewing the Workload of each team member. To do so comfortably, open the Workload view.
Here, you can see how busy each of your team members is and quickly reassign items to even out the workload between them.
Moreover, you can specify the work hours and availability of each team member. Thus allowing you to plan and manage expectations more accurately.
Tags
To further categorize your items, we suggest using Tags. Depending on your process, these could be used to separate projects, teams, clients, support levels, etc. Besides having a visual cue for each item, Tags provide an opportunity to filter your views and reports.
For example, if you are using a tag to separate clients, you can then filter reports and views to only view information for specific clients. Giving you more power over the data and ease of finding the right items quickly.
