agile project management and...

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Agile Project Management and Boards Users Guide – aqua v6.70.03

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You don’t have to be a scrum master to take advantage of our new boards that facilitate Agile project

management! Boards are a visual Kanban-style tool used to manage the flow of work. Our boards allow

for more flexible planning options, clear focus, and transparency throughout the project life-cycle while

keeping everything centralized in a single system.

Boards ‘flatten out’ the backlog of projects and assignments, making it easy to drag and drop them into

action. At the same time, assign hours to team members by week with real-time workload feedback.

Imagine an electronic board that organizes all your open projects and assignments into columns and

swim lanes giving you visibility into project status at a glance. Team members work together from the

board to keep assignments moving in real time. Boards connect seamlessly with existing features such

as the project schedule, assignments and the dashboard, so you won’t have to choose between using

boards and other features that serve a specific purpose.

FEATURES

Design your own boards. Boards can be simple containing a single or few columns and states, or

they can be designed with layers to handle more demanding workflows and requirements. Boards

can even be designed to enforce certain actions and track your progress.

Manage projects using boards. Create boards by office or team and include any number of

projects. Manage projects and assignments visually from the board. All team members participate in

providing input on what’s being worked on and completed. A complete history of actions and

comments is created and tracked for every assignment.

Manage work with cards. Boards display cards representing all your work. Starting with backlog,

organize and prioritize assignments. Assign team members, then activate and track assignments

visually by moving cards into the appropriate columns on the board. As in traditional Agile project

management, team members can work from the board to move assignments along, or pull new ones

from backlog. As an option, work from the dashboard which is controlled by the project manager.

Manage resources by week. Using boards, hours can be assigned to each team member by week

within a Sprint. This allows for a focused, real-time look at workload and availability for the current

week based on what’s assigned. You can still see long-term workload based schedules, so you have

everything you need to make short-term assignment and long-term staffing decisions.

The Dashboard isolates work for team members. When using boards, only assignments and

tasks that are in active sprints are displayed. The dashboard also includes assignments, tasks,

standard alerts, and reviews that are not assigned to a board. From the dashboard card, employees

can view and update details and attachments, add comments, add time, and add a bookmark. Time

is added by assignment and function automatically, so you have the best of both worlds!

The Project Management Dashboard isolates boards for the selected job. Full board capabilities

are available for a single project, using this view from the Job Jacket PMD.

DESIGN YOUR OWN BOARDS

Create your own boards with any column configuration needed to fit individual requirements. You can

access Board maintenance from Maintenance/Project Management.

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Use the default ‘basic’ board and keep it simple. The basic board includes standard backlog and

completed columns and basic action columns. If this isn’t all you need, just create your own.

You can exclude ‘Tasks’ from your board sprints by selecting the option to “Exclude Tasks” in Board

Maintenance. Choose this option if you prefer to exclude project schedule tasks from boards and

keep schedules and assignments separate.

You can track board card movements by clicking on Track Changes and include an email on each

change as an option.

Create boards that drive a more detailed workflow with any number of columns and states. States

allow you to track the status of an item without creating an excessive number of columns. States

allow you to track a status within a board column and help you track a detailed workflow on every

assignment.

Board maintenance is an extension of Workflow maintenance, allowing you to customize workflow

templates and states from here. Add new or remove states, add or remove states from templates.

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The selection of a Workflow template on the board simply narrows the states to select from. Pick and

choose from any number or templates to design your board.

MANAGE PROJECTS USING BOARDS

Create one or more boards to manage assignments by office, team or for everything in

a single board. You can access Boards from the Project Management menu or from

the ‘check box’ icon on the Webvantage sidebar.

Assign jobs to boards to immediately narrow the backlog to those projects. A board

can include any number of jobs or “all jobs” as an option. A job can be assigned to

multiple boards. Click on a job from here and directly access the related job jacket.

Boards can be assigned to offices but can be used across offices.

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Active boards are available for all team members to access and work from.

BOARD SPRINTS

Boards contain sprints that define the timeframes allotted to teams for getting work done.

Sprints allow you to manage work in iterations with a start date and a specific number of weeks.

Using sprints, you can manage workload by employee and week for a more specific look at resources

and availability across sprints and updated in real-time.

Create sprints in advance and create as many as you like. Sprints can be created with up to 12

weeks initially, but you can extend the sprint date indefinitely if you like.

Activate sprints when work is ready to begin. Team members won’t see assignments on their lists or

dashboards until the related sprints are activated. Security features allow you to control when a sprint

can be accessed by team members.

Complete sprints, and any unfinished assignments are automatically moved out of the sprint and

either into backlog or assigned to next sprint. If you move assignments to backlog, weekly hours

allocated will be lost. To preserve weekly hours allocated, choose the option to move the

assignments into the next sprint (this is the default option).

If there are no active sprints, assignments will display, awaiting a new sprint.

Completed sprints retain a record of assignments completed within that sprint along with allocated

hours.

When items are moved to the next sprint, the allocated hours for previous sprints carry forward and

new weekly hours may be added.

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MANAGE WORK WITH CARDS

Manage and organize cards representing the backlog of assignments for all related projects on the

board. Backlog consists of tasks and assignments related to the project and both can be added

directly from the board. 200 items of backlog show in the backlog column at a time. As you move

backlog the board, additional items added to backlog. The upcoming “Backlog Manager” module will

allow you to manage all backlog prior to working on a board.

Cards are displayed on the board in detail or summary. Backlog and completed items are

summarized by default to allow for more cards to be displayed.

Backlog sort order is by user defined order, due date, task grid order (if task card), priority, and then

create / modified date. Once you begin re-ordering backlog, a user order is saved for all backlog

assignments. Using the option to “Reorder”, assignment cards will be re-set and re-ordered based on

this default sort order and the user defined order will be removed.

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Manage the backlog using priorities and/or by dropping them in the desired order.


Tasks and assignments can be added without ever leaving the board. Project schedules are not

required, however, you can use Boards in conjunction with a traditional schedule and take advantage

of both. If you prefer to keep the schedule tasks separate, use Assignments (both routed and non-

routed) on the board instead.

Click on the Plus Sign to Add a Card to the Board or Right click in the space around the cards.

Assignments can be routed or non-routed. When not routed, add as many assignees as you like.

When routed, the assignment follows a secondary workflow path and is routed from one assignee to

the next.

Boards can contain both task and non-task assignments. Tasks are linked directly to the schedule

(when one exists) and display details that can be updated from the board. Non-task assignments are

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added outside of the schedule for anything you like including actions, issues, stories, and more.

These “types” allow you to classify each assignment on the board.

New assignments added can include details about timing, hours and assignments.

As mentioned, task cards interface directly with the task on the schedule. The card description

cannot be changed because it originates from the schedule. However, you can manage the task from

the board by changing the due date, adding or removing assignees, adding function comments (in the

card description, no images allowed here), etc.

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Managing priority and importance of each assignment on the board is simple. Change the priority

and/or move cards up and down using the right-click menu, or drag and drop cards within columns to

visually manage them by importance.

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Assignment cards are shown on the board based on their due date, priority and status. You have

complete visibility into who is doing what and when.

Using a detailed workflow board, you can track the movement across columns and even assign

different states within a column.

Basic Board

Workflow Board with Multiple States

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Cards display a summary of status, assignees, and other key information. From the card, you can

select team members, allocate weekly hours, and add time that is associated directly with the

assignment you are working on.

On Task Cards, visual indicators tell you when an assignee has marked the task Temp Complete.

Double click or use the magnifying glass icon to drill down to card details.

You can directly access the Job Jacket (PMD) and related information from the board card detail.

Drill down to add comments, view history, see hours analysis and update details.

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Filter and search for specific cards or assignees on a board and organize your work into swim lanes.

Show a summary or detailed card to maximize space on the board. Print the board, if desired.

Filter just the backlog or the entire board.

Move cards across columns during the workflow process using the drag and drop feature.

Drag onto a single state or choose from any state in the column based on the status of the

assignment.

Selecting a state from the card detail also changes the column automatically, even when not on a

board.

A complete history of each action and every comment is recorded with the assignment. Team

members are notified via Email or through the dashboard so they can take immediate action to

resolve issues or just keep projects moving.

Based on your procedures, team members can work from the board on assignments and pull new

ones from backlog, or they can work exclusively from their personal dashboard.

Overall, teams are more efficient and productive because they are actively involved in the process.

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MANAGE RESOURCES BY WEEK

Managing resources by week is very simple when using boards and sprints.

Break down the hours allowed for each assignment into weekly buckets for each team member.

This allows for a focused look at what you’ve assigned to team members in a given week.

Each week is displayed from the card and includes:

o Hours allocated for the assignment.

o Hours available for the week (including time off, appointments and holidays on the

Calendar),

o All hours assigned for the week across all boards and sprints.

o The balance for the week.

This information is available on every assignment, so you are constantly in view of each team

member’s workload. You can instantly adjust hours and assignments as needed.

Because hours can now also be posted to individual assignments, you can also see hours

assigned compared to hours posted (and balance). In the assignment detail, you can see the

hours allowed, allocated (in weekly hours), posted, and posted balance. Everything is displayed

in real-time.

TIME ENTRY

From the timesheet and from the various time pop-ups available in Webvantage (including from

the Board), time can now be entered against the related or selected assignment. This information

is used for reporting and analysis.

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THE JOB BOARD

Boards can be displayed from the Job Jacket PMD. The Job Board displays boards that the

selected job is a part of and allows for all the same basic features you have when accessing the

main board. You will still see all jobs on the board so that sorting and prioritization remain intact.

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THE DASHBOARD

The dashboard crosses all projects and isolates assignments for the individual employee. Assignments

that are part of a board/sprint, will only show on the dashboard when in an active sprint. From here, you

can add time, add comments, mark complete, and even change the board status. Everything you do on

the dashboard is reflected on the related board automatically. Communication with the team is

continuous regardless of where you access the assignment. Tasks remain on a separate tab in phase I,

but soon, tasks and assignments will be accessed from a single Assignments page.

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Board Settings to Consider

Workflow Maintenance – Changed from Alert Assignment Maintenance

Board Maintenance

Agency Timesheet Settings – Ability to require time to be posted to an assignment.

Board Features Coming Soon

This document covers the Board features in our first phase release. We’ll continue to add features and

capability as we receive your input and feedback. We’re already working on additional capability which

will be announced and released as it is completed, including:

Ability to assign stories to epics, for organization and reporting of “story” assignments.

Project and backlog manager.

Assignment master dashboard for managing across boards for team members.

Employee weekly workload and burn rate dashboard by team.

Other reports will be updated to add the workload and time posted data. This is in progress now.

More ways to search and filter.

Ability to re-arrange order of states in Board Maintenance.

Ability to assign tasks (project schedule level) to a title (for workload purposes) in addition or

instead of an actual employee.

Webvantage General UI / UX Improvements

Our goal is to provide robust and fully integrated project management tools that meet the needs of our

agency clients, while constantly working to improve the user interface and user experience along the way.

We’ll do this by listening, evaluating our designs, and implementing newer or better technologies and

methods.

Our new Boards feature is an example of how we are adding a new visual interface that drastically

changes how projects are managed. However, we won’t stop there. See below for changes we’re

making in our latest versions of AQUA that will improve the user experience in all areas of Webvantage:

We’re in the process of converting to MVC from ASP.NET. This change means overall faster

page rendering and partial page rendering (less screen refreshing, post backs, flashing, etc.).

This change alone will result in a much smoother user experience where implemented.

We’re moving from multi-window to a more standard web interface with improved navigation

modeled after frameworks such as Bootstrap. This major change will allow for a cleaner and

more responsive UI/UX. The result will be a dramatic increase in speed as well as increased

usability from other devices. By default, this will change how you navigate through the system.

We’ll make it easy to move from one page to another without searching through menus.

Over time, we’ll replace workspace objects with dashboards that will feel more integrated and

easier to work with.

Other Key Features Coming Soon

The Webvantage Time Sheet is in the process of being re-written using our new standards. You’ll see a

dramatic change in how data is entered, but also in how we help you find jobs to add to your time sheet.

Like our other new modules, the new time sheet will have an improved visual interface and drag and drop

actions that help speed up time entry.

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