There are three types of project work items--tasks, user stories and actions. Each has a purpose and knowing when to use each one will keep your project organized and running smoothly.
Tasks are the main work items in a project. Depending on how you organize your project, descriptions of the work are done in the tasks or in the user stories.
Traditional Project Management (Waterfall)
The Waterfall method is particularly useful for projects with well-defined and unchanging requirements. It is a phased and sequential methodology that typically has specific deployment dates. It can be easier to map out dependencies and structure the overall project plan. Specifications are carefully laid out in advance.
In this case, tasks are all you need. You add detailed descriptions of the work to be done in each task. Before the project ever gets underway, you have a very good idea of project detail. Customers will have signed off on the documented requirements and you progress the project according to its tasks.
Agile Project Management
The Agile method works well for projects that need more flexibility. It maintains a continuous feedback loop that accommodates evolving requirements.
Agile can also thrive in an environment where there is a clearly articulated and well-supported product strategy. Here, everyone is aligned around objectives, goals, and Key Performance Indicators, and team members can have more freedom and independence to work toward achieving these goals rapidly.
Often, Agile projects use Sprints, specific periods of time with designated sets of objectives. This is a way of breaking large projects into smaller, more manageable pieces of work, for example, two weeks at a time. Progress is reviewed daily by all participants to highlight successes and uncover potential roadblocks that need to be removed.
Hybrid
Hybrid project management is the practice of mixing Agile and traditional Waterfall project management elements to create a custom approach. Blended project management methods are popular among Agile teams. When planning in a Waterfall approach, you might agree only on high-level deadlines, milestones and deliverables. When planning in an Agile approach, you can break tasks into time-based allotments. Here you might agree to work in iterations, or sprints to prioritize the work that gets done in each time frame.
Managing Your Project in TekStack
In TekStack, it’s possible to support all three methodologies. The Gantt chart that appears on creation of a project looks like the traditional Waterfall method. And if you clearly delineate tasks and include thorough descriptions, you can manage it that way. You can even set up placeholder tasks which will eventually be filled out with more detail in User Stories.
There is allowance to add as many user stories as you need to fully describe work outlined after the start of the project. Resources and budget hours can be allocated to user stories. This gives you the flexibility and independence to manage a project according to customer needs that become known after the fact.
Tasks
When you create a project plan, you typically budget hours for each task. The work is defined, the time is estimated, and resources are allocated to the task hours. This is the Waterfall approach.
Note: On the Budget Hours for the project, only task budget hours are included.
Team members log their time against budgeted hours for the task. These hours become actual hours on the project and are used for customer billing.
Tasks can be used as placeholders for work that will be defined in the future, for example, in a series of sprints to complete the work. A placeholder task might be called Sprint 1 and given a bucket of hours over a time period.
User Stories
The main purpose of user stories is to document work you plan to do just before you do it. User stories are defined as part of a task. They offer flexibility to define work once you have learned the requirements. For example, if you have a placeholder task called “Sprint 1”, a related user story might be call be “Customize the login experience to show a privacy notification” or “Create new custom fields and add them to a form”. These would be customer-defined requirements that are only discovered after the project begins.
When setting up related user stories, you can define budget hours and resources the same as you do for tasks.
Note: Hours budgeted on user stories are not included in the project Budget Hours.
However, those budgeted hours are calculated when a resource logs a time entry against the user story work. Remember, user stories are associated with tasks. That logged time rolls up to the Task Budget Hours and they become Task Actual Hours. The logged hours that become actual hours are subtracted from the Task Budget Hours to create Remaining Hours on the Task.
Actions
Actions are the smallest items and can be used as project standards to ensure that each project is carried out in the same way. Examples of these might be: “Set up the sales handover meeting”, “Send a welcome email”, “Set up a kick-off meeting”. It ensures that everyone is doing their project management consistently. These standardized actions can be put into templates for use on all projects.
Actions can also come up as the project progresses. They can act partly as your project methodology and partly as a checklist. Time on actions is not tracked. However, they can be completed against work on a task without interfering with budget hours or logged time. They can be visible to customers or not and even used to assign work items to customers.
An Action is a type of Risk, Action, Issue, or Key Decision (R.A.I.D.) item. It is included in a R.A.I.D. log. Risks, Issues and Key Decisions are not planned work items as part of your project management methodology. They arise, often unexpectedly, as your project progresses. Nevertheless, they must be recorded as part of your project organization. More information is available in our Knowledge Article, Learn More about the R.A.I.D. log.