Structured Agile

A "line" can represent anything from Workstreams, Phases, Themes or PODs. Basically any work that needs to be planned must have a line on the roadmap. These then break down further to Epics or Buckets of work and those Epics breakdown to Tasks and Stories

To draw a line just press "A. You can then drag and resize to change dates and duration.

You can place a milestones to your timeline by pressing M. You can then drag it to change the milestone date.

Just click on the circles at the end of each line to create dependencies between them.

You can create basic dependencies, like one line must complete before the other starts or start-to-start dependencies meaning two lines must start at the same time.

If a dependency exists when changes to a line's dates are made, the dependency line will also be updated automatically.

To delete a dependency simply click on the dependency line.

Zoom, expand and jump to key dates like plan start date, end date and today.

Here you can change the title of your timeline and define the team or "workstream" involved with this phase.

The header also doubles as an insight tool as to the duration of the phase with insights on progress and peak busy weeks.

Your timeline is broken down into weeks. Each week allows you to add an Epic to it using the plus sign.

You do not have to be exact with your weekly breakdown. In fact, you can put all your Epics in week one and missionX will automatcially roll them over until completed or set to "Inactive" from your Epic workboard

What the week columns are actually doing is determining which Epics can be worked on during Sprint planning. This way the PM and Scrum master can align as to what is being worked on and when.

You can "Plan your Sprints" within three weeks of today. Planning out any further is not supported as we have already bent the rules of Agile enough at this point.

Each square tile is an Epic (Bucket of work). These Epics can be dragged and dropped to other weeks as you wish, except if you have items already planned.

Plan or don't plan weekly, but once a Sprint has progressed and there are active tasks and stories in Sprint Runner there can be no changes to the Epic.

Remember you can only plan sprints with Epics that are in the week you are planning. So if you don't plan on working on something till near the end of the project... push it down the timeline.

You can set a reminder to have the team meet for Sprint planning on a regular basis by clicking on the calendar icon.

Optionally add a short description if you wish detailing what you hope to achieve and some basic information of what's involved.

The controls allow you to set the Epic to Active or Inactive and even delete the Epic.

Setting an Epic to inactive will freeze it, meaning it will not appear as an option when Sprint planning and will not be rolled over every week.

Each project in missionX can define a process flow. In structured Agile this is where the process is visualized as a mini-kanban.

The planning and estimating is done in Sprint Runner but the progression through the process is viewed here.

Drag and drop tasks to change estimated start and end date, then resize to change duration. This allows you to work to a rough timeline.

Although members can work on any task, in any order after Sprint planning is complete, AI will prioritize work to nudge people into completing work as expected.

At the end of the week, any unfinished tasks will automatically be removed from the timeline and put back into the Epic backlog for re-planning. SO a Story or task can technically last for weeks (but it shouldn't)

These are the steps of the process in the order your define. If you want to change the order, simply drag and drop to reorder.

Optionally select a color for your colum to differntiate tasks on your workboard.

Delete the column. If you delete a column, any tasks in the column will be automatically taken back to the previous step.

If you choose to assign people to a column, then any tasks moved to this part of the process will be automatically be assigned to the person with the most capacity.

An example of this would be if you have an "Approval" step, then the person who is in charge of approving work will automatically be assigne the task and notified.

In some cases you may want tasks to skip steps going forward in the process but allow for items sent back in the process.

A common scenario for this is "rework" or "changes needed". An example might be if your process looks like: Design, Changes and Client approves. "Changes" would then skip and tasks would go directly for approval. If for some reason it is not approved then you can send it back to "Design"

This is extremly helpful if you want to spot problems or track how much volume is being sent back in the process by looking at the colum header's details.

Add a a new column from here and save any changes before exiting.

Please remember to save your changes. This is one of the few places where missionX does not autosave for you.

Your Burndown chart represents the amount of work defined vs how much of that work has been completed. This is all based on Complexity points that are defined for each task and not the number of tasks. This is important because you may have 20 tasks left but they may all be extremly hard to complete and require a long time so number of tasks is not the best way to track work completion.

The bottom axis is the weeks in your project, the Y axis on the left is how many complexity points are planned for. The middle green diagonal line is how many points need to be completed each week for you to deleiver on time.

Now the red line is your burndown, how are you doing completing work on a weekly basis and at what rate you will finish. It should closely match the green line. It the red line is pointing before the green line great, you are finishing early but if the red line is trending to the right of the green line. you are heading for delays and you will need to complete more work to get it back on track.

Structured Agile projects will show a Burndown chart for every workstream, POD or phase in your project