Mattermost Boards How-to: Sprint Planning

Editor’s note: Boards is no longer part of the default Mattermost product offering, but is available as a plug-in.

Mattermost Boards is an easy-to-use and lightweight tool to manage your backlog, plan your sprints, and so much more! Create fully customizable boards to track tasks and bugs. Boards are updated instantly as soon as any changes are made, so your teams can stay in sync with a single source of truth. For teams looking for a lightweight open source alternative to Jira, Azure DevOps, or Asana to manage Agile workflows, Boards is a great choice.

In this guide, we’ll show you how to customize a pre-built Mattermost Boards template to create your own sprint planning board. You’ll then be able to manage tasks and collaborate with your team members all from one centralized location. Each board will help your teams stay aligned to complete tasks, reach milestones, and achieve their goals.

What you’ll need:

• A Mattermost server. You can test this out on our open source community server or create your own Mattermost workspace.
• The “Sprint Planner” template from Mattermost Boards, which can be found in the Boards template picker.

About the Sprint Planner template

The “Sprint Planner” template is designed to give you a solid starting point to plan your next sprint and help your team stay on top of work items, track progress, and set priorities. All boards in Mattermost have the same set of features, but the built-in templates come with predefined properties, saved views, and example cards to help you get started quicker.

The “Sprint Planner” template includes the following properties out of the box:

• Status – Keep the team up-to-date on the status of each work item.
• Type – Differentiate work items between bugs, tasks, user stories, features, and epics.
• Priority – Prioritize your work items by assigning a priority value to each card.
• Assignee – Assign team members on work items so everyone understands who is responsible for what.
• Due Date – Set target dates to stay on track.
• Story Points – Set point estimates to help you plan each sprint more accurately.
• Design Link – Link cards to external design files such as Figma or InVision.
• Created Time – Identify when the work item was added to the board.
• Created By – Identify who created the work item.

The “Sprint Planner” template also includes the following saved views out of the box. All of the default properties and saved views included in the template can be modified to fit your Agile process.

• By Sprint – Manage all work items in a table view to see what’s planned for the current and upcoming sprints.

• By Status – Track your work items in a Kanban view as they progress through each stage during the sprint.

• By Type – Visualize all work items on a kanban view grouped by their type.

How to use and modify the Sprint Planner template

In Mattermost, navigate to Boards using the global menu in the upper left corner. Select the ＋ icon at the top of the sidebar, then select “Create new board” to open the template picker. Select the “Sprint Planner” template. Once a board is created from the template in Mattermost, you’ll be able to start modifying it to suit your project. Start with the title and board description! Here are some other areas you might consider making changes:

• Customize card properties by modifying the existing values and adding additional properties to match your sprint planning workflows.
• Add new cards to reflect all the work items that need to be completed.
• Assign property values on each card such as status, type, and priority.
• Add requirements to your work items in the description section towards the bottom of each card.
• Plan your sprint by dragging work items to the upcoming sprint.
• Add point estimates to each card in the sprint so you don’t overplan.
• Assign cards in the sprint to team members so everyone knows which work items they’ll be responsible for.
• Link the board to a relevant channel so all channel members can quickly find and access the board.

Get started with Boards 

Mattermost Boards is a powerful sprint planning and collaboration tool for any team. With Mattermost Boards, you have the full flexibility to plan and manage sprints your way. Check out more ways to customize your board in our docs.

Ready to kick off your next sprint in Mattermost Boards? Learn more about spinning up your own Mattermost environment to get started today.