Have more questions? Need help setting up your workflow? Get in touch!
Projects are the highest level containers in Zube. You attach one or more data sources (GitHub Repositories) to a Project and that defines what information you can manage within the Project. Projects are made up of Workspaces, the Issue Manager, Tickets, and Epics, all of which are described in more detail below. A project also allows you to control which team members have access to your data. Only your team members that are project users will be able to view the components of a Project. Project admins can add or remove project users or make other users a project admin. A list of your Projects can be found on the Zube homepage, after you sign in. If you do not currently belong to any Projects, there will be a form that allows you to create your first Project.
To create a Project, enter a name for your Project, select a GitHub organization, and select one or more source repositories to add to your project. Note that a particular source can only belong to a single project on Zube. If you need to share sources between teams, you should add all the sources you want to share to a single project. If you then need to separate out work items into separate boards, you can use Workspaces for that. Once you submit your new Project, Zube will automatically import the issues from the source repositories, turn those issues into Zube cards and generate a Workspace for your Project. Once the import is finished, you'll be redirected to your Workspace Kanban board.
Workspaces allow you break apart your cards into separate spaces. Workspaces contain a Kanban board, Sprint board, Sprints, and Analytics. Each project has at least one Workspace, but you can create multiple Workspaces for your Project. Every Workspace on a Project will have access to the same source repositories that have been added to the Project. However, cards can only exist on one Workspace at a time, which allows you to segment your cards as appropriate. Cards can be moved between Workspaces so you can create a workflow across different teams.
The Kanban board is set of columns that allow you to track the progress of tasks as they move through your workflow. The Zube Kanban board default columns are Inbox, Backlog, Ready, In Progress, In Review and Done. Cards that are newly added to the Workspace (such as when an issue is made on GitHub) will go into the Inbox column by default. Cards that are moved into the Done column on Zube will be automatically closed and cards closed via GitHub will be automatically moved into the Done column.
A Kanban board is a component of a Workspace, and kanban boards on different Workspaces can have different of columns. This lets you set up a well tailored workflow for each Workspace. Columns can be customized on the Workspace settings page.
The Sprint board allows you to organize your tasks into Sprints. An Agile sprint is a set duration of development time in which work is to be completed. The columns on the left side of the sprint board are tasks that are not currently part of any sprint. They are a slightly darker color and are outside of the sprint section. The sprint section is comprised of the columns beneath the sprint header information, and are slightly lighter in color than the global columns. By default the first sprint column is called "Ready". To add a card to a sprint, simply drag it into any of the columns in the sprint section. Typically, to add a card to a sprint, you would drag a card from the Backlog, which is a global column intended to be used as your product backlog, to the Ready column, which is sprint column and is supposed to be used as your sprint backlog.
You can change which column serves as the sprint backlog on the Workspace settings page and any column to the right of the sprint backlog will be a sprint column on a Sprint board.
You can manage your Sprints from the Sprints page. The Sprints page allows you to create, edit, close and delete sprints. Sprints must have a start and end date.
Zube offers a variety of Agile charts and analytics to help you keep track of how your team is doing.
If your team is using Sprints, you can track your sprint progress using Burndown and Burnup charts. Burndowns allow you to see how much work your team has left to do in the Sprint and if your team is on schedule to complete all the Sprint work on time. The Burndown chart has two lines. The Open Points/Cards (blue) line show how many open points are left in your Sprint by day. The Ideal Open Points/Cards line (red) shows how much work should still be open in order to complete the work in the Sprint on time.
A Burnup chart tracks how much work has been completed during the Sprint. Burnup charts have three lines, Goal, Closed Points/Cards, and Ideal Closed Points/Cards. The Goal line allows you to easily see when new work is added to a sprint. Similar to the Burndown Ideal line, the Burnup ideal line marks how much work should have been closed in order to ensure all of the work in your Sprint is completed on time. The Closed line shows the total number of points or cards closed that have been closed.
Both Burndown and Burnup charts can be filtered by source and can be set to exclude weekends in the Ideal line calculation. They can also display data using point totals or card totals.
The Throughput chart shows you how much work your team is completing everyday. The chart is a stacked bar chart with each segment representing the work done on each of your sources. Throughput charts can help you spot changes in your team's productivity or workflow. Zube's Throughput chart has many filters that allow you dig into the details of what work is being completed everyday.
The Throughput chart can be filtered by card type, source, assignee, epic, label, milestone and sprint. You can also adjust the date range displayed. Data can be presented as point totals or card totals.
The Users Throughput chart tracks how much is being done by each team member weekly. Like the Throughput chart, the Users throughput chart allows you to track how efficiently your team is working and spot potential problems in your team members' workflows. The Users Throughput chart also offers a rich set of filters. The chart can be displayed as a stacked area chart or stacked bar chart.
The Users Throughput chart can be filtered by source, assignee, label, milestone and sprint. You can also adjust the date range displayed. Data can be presented as point totals or card totals.
If you are using Sprints, you can track how much work your team is getting done per sprint with the Velocity chart. The Velocity chart is a stacked bar chart showing how many cards or points were closed during each sprint in the selected date range. Each section of the bars represents one of your sources. The Velocity chart allows you to see potential problems in your team's efficiency as well as providing a way to predict how much work your team will be able to accomplish in future sprints.
The Velocity chart can be filtered by source and label. You can also adjust the date range displayed. Data can be presented as point totals or card totals.
If you create more than one Workspace for your Project, you will enable the Triage view. You can also choose to enable the Triage view for Projects with a single Workspace. Triage is a place to organize, prioritize, and add additional information to cards before they are assigned to a Workspace. New issues created on GitHub will go to Triage if Triage has been enabled. If your Project only has one Workspace and Triage is disabled, new cards will appear in the default new column of the Kanban/Sprint board (by default it is the column called "Inbox"). Triage is also a good place to create cards when you are unsure of which Workspace they should belong to, so it is an ideal entry point for less technical team members.
You can drag cards from the Triage list to one of the Workspace dropzone found on the right hand side. It is also possible to select several cards at once, and move them in bulk to a workspace using the "Move Selected Cards" action. Cards that are dragged to a Workspace, or moved in bulk, will go to the default new column of the destination Workspace.
It is also possible to create Triage rules that will automatically send matching cards to a workspace of your choice. You can create a new Triage rule in the "Project Settings" under the Triage tab. To create a new rule, choose from any combination of source, assignee, or label and also a destination workspace. Matching cards will skip the Triage view and go straight to the workspace you chose. You can create as many rules as you like. The rules are checked from top to bottom and the first rule that matches will be applied to the card. You can drag the rules around to reorder them.
Epics are a fundamental component of Agile project management which allow you to group related issues (user stories) together and track their progress. To create an Epic, click the 'New Epic' button at the top of the screen on the Epics page. Once you've created your Epic, you can attach cards to the Epic and the Epic will automatically track the status of those cards as they move through your workflow. The Epic will update its status as your cards move from creation to completion. Epics also keep track of the number of open and closed cards and open and closed points and display progress bars with that information.
The Issue Manager is the most powerful way to search for, update, and move your cards across your entire Project. The Issue Manager gives you access to every card in your Project. Search, filter, and sort to find what you're looking for and easily update or move them all at once. Zube also provides a JSON export of your cards from the Issue Manager so you always have easy access to your data. A JSON export means that you are free to generate custom reports and analytics, or just take your data with you.
Zube Tickets allow your team members to log bugs, feature requests, and other items that don't become GitHub Issues. Tickets are a great way for everyone to communicate with the development team. Zube cards can be attached to Tickets, and the Ticket will track the progress of those issues and automatically update to reflect the state of the tasks being done.
Have more questions? Need help setting up your workflow? Get in touch!