How to use Pie for Agile Sprints, Hybrids, and DevOps

How to use the Pie board sprint feature

For development projects, use this option for driving agile sprints and scrums, where you would start with a backlog of requirement tasks in a Not Started column. Drag them to the In Progress column to work on, and finally move them to the Done column when finished.

The "Done" column has a special feature that automatically turns your task card into a green done state when you drag it to this Done column.

Mark your sprint as completed by clicking the Done box's edit button (three dots icon) and select "Mark sprint as finished...". This will automatically move the done tasks over to a sprint column in the next slice called "Done Sprints". If your project slices don't include a slice called Done Sprints, no worries, your Pie application will automatically create it for you in your project. The Done Sprints slice is for storing your history of sprint work. When you click the mark sprint as finished button, your current Done column will be empty and ready for the next sprint.

Steps for iterating through sprints:

1. You start with your board in a slice and your board has the default Done column.
2. As you drag your task cards into that Done column, the tasks are changed to the green done progress state.
3. Once you are finished with your sprint, click the Done box's edit kabab button and select the "Mark sprint as finished" option.
4. Pie will check if your pie has a Done Sprints slice to the right of the current slice, and if not found, it will auto create it for you.
5. Pie will then place a copy of your Done column with all of its tasks in that Done Sprints slice. In doing so, it will concatenate that day's date so it will be labeled "[today's date] Done". . If there are already Done columns from previous sprints, it will be added to the right of of the last one.
6. Your previous Done column will be emptied so you can start your next sprint. All other columns and their tasks in the sprint board will remain unchanged.

How-to Video: How we use Pie for Agile and DevOps

A hybrid sprint/waterfall approach

We have found that most all companies use a hybrid approach to development projects. The start of the project containing processes like planning, budgeting, goal setting and the end of the project with training and deployment are process driven in nature and don't lend well to using boards. You would use either the create task list or create process box options under these slices.

Whereas, the middle of the project where development occurs, a pure agile approach with our create board feature is great. In that development pie slice, a backlog of requirements could be in flux with a lot of unknowns. The team can decide at the beginning of a sprint what requirement tasks ("stories" or "tickets") to target and work on for a defined set of days or weeks. The developers can then pick up a task card from the Not Started column and move it forward as mentioned in the previous Agile Sprint section above.

With the create options, Pie gives you the best of both worlds not only in one application, but even within one project!

Prepare a recipe for agile projects

You can create an agile-ready recipe for future projects as a repeatable process. Whether your entire project is a board or you're using the popular hybrid sprint/waterfall approach, your recipe can be set up with any combination.

Create a new recipe and you will find the same three options (create task, create board, create process box) for each recipe slice. When you create your projects from that recipe, your projects will be ready to go.

How to set up Pie for multiple agile teams working in the same project

Yes! It's possible. With a project that has multiple slices, you can set up more than one sprint group where each sprint slice would be for different agile teams.

1. Create your project or recipe slices as normal
2. Add sprint slices and in those slices create a board and make sure it has a Done column that has a green outline. This will be used for your mark sprint done auto feature as explained above.
3. Add a Done Sprints slice at the very end of your slices or towards the end and leave it empty.
4. In each sprint board, when that particular sprint is done, just mark it as done and Pie will create a done box in the Done Sprints slice. 
5. You can then rename the Done Sprint boxes after they are auto created to reference which done box refers to which sprint.

How-to Video: Multiple agile teams in same projects and SAFe structuring

Do you have a large enterprise program that requires SAFe scaled agile methods? You can easily set up Pie recipe and project structures to run a large-scale program with multiple agile teams. This video will provide a couple of examples.

How to write a "story" task card

A story is a method of defining a feature or improvement task for your requirements that will be built in the sprints.  A standard story statement is: "As a ... user, I want to ..., so that I can..."

An example story statement could be, "As a hospital laboratory technician, I want to enter patient lab results, so I can ensure the record is stored and retrievable for the doctor access."

Enter the story line as the first line in the task's description. Avoid using stories as the task title name.  At PieMatrix, we like to a one or two-word feature set descriptor followed by a dash and the short statement of what it is. As an example, for the above story, a ticket could be, "Lab Reports - Create patient data field". Over time you could have a number of tickets related to "Lab Reports" and it becomes easy to identify tasks for a feature set at a quick glance.

For story cards, consider adding a task color tag or a text tag in the event you may want to filter all project views to display only tasks related to feature or improvements separated from other task types, such as bug fixes.