Project management is a critical aspect of any organization, and having efficient tools is paramount nowadays. This article will provide a quick guide to the Jira Planning Board and its features.  We will also discover how to work with the planning dashboard in ActivityTimeline.

Jira Planning Board Explanation

Jira Planning Board is a tool designed to streamline project planning and execution. It visually represents tasks, allowing teams to plan, track, and manage projects with unparalleled precision. With features like customizable boards, filters, and swimlanes, the Jira board is a comprehensive solution for project managers seeking optimal efficiency.

Jira provides different planning boards for various teams: agile board (scrum board, or kanban board), and boards for non-technical teams.

Kanban Board in Jira

Some agile teams use the Kanban planning board. This Jira board helps teams manage work by visualizing the workflow. Jira seamlessly incorporates Kanban principles, providing teams with a powerful and intuitive platform.

The board allows for a real-time, visual representation of tasks, facilitating enhanced collaboration and transparency. It helps to track issue statuses and understand which issues are in "To Do" status, are in "In Progress" or "Done".

Sprint Planning with Scrum Board

The development team can also choose a scrum board that is widely used in project management. The scrum team can use this Jira planning board for software development objectives. This agile board helps to manage sprints and set and track the backlog.

Jira also offers numerous integrations (like Jira Plans, resource planning tools, and timesheet integration) or the users' enhanced planning capabilities.

Resource and Project Planning with ActivityTimeline

ActivityTimeline is a resource planning and tracking add-on for Jira, that is suitable for technical teams and for teams that don't stick to agile methodologies. It's compatible with Jira Software and Jira Service Management and is available for Jira Cloud & Jira Data Center.

The app's Planning Dashboard gives a visual representation of the Jira projects with tasks in different stages, as well as user and team timelines:

The Key Features of ActivityTimeline

Simple Issue Scheduling

It's very easy to oversee who is doing what and when it will be done with the help of this planning view. Here you may find a Left Panel with all Jira Projects with issues:

Just choose the needed Jira project and schedule project tasks directly on the users' timelines. Users can also create new tasks directly from the main Dashboard in a few clicks! All the data from the app is fully synchronized with Jira and vice versa:

If you work with multiple teams and projects, containing hundreds of tasks, you will like the app "Issue Search" field helping to find the right issue in a few clicks with the help of the Quick Filters and Groupings.

For instance, when searching for an unassigned task to add to your to-do list, you can customize your preferences and apply task filtering with ease.

Workload Tracking

Each team member has a special workload indicator, which helps to understand whether users have the capacity for more work and prevent burnout.

It's very simple to understand the workload: if the indicator is green, the workload is perfect.

By default, the users' work schedule is 8 working hours per day, but you can change them in the configuration menu and create various workload schemes.

If the indicator is yellow - the user is underloaded and you can assign more work. If the indicator is red - the user is overloaded, so it's very important to reassign work to other people or reschedule tasks.

The workload mode can be switched to the availability mode, so the indicators will show the availability of users.

Holiday Management

Jira does not have built-in functionality to support customized events like appointments, meetings, holidays, time off, and vacations. These features are crucial for effectively managing time-off requests and workload. To fill this void, ActivityTimeline offers support for holiday management, addressing this particular need.

Enhanced Team Collaboration

ActivityTimeline presents a Team Panel in conjunction with the user timeline feature, providing teams with enhanced strategic planning capabilities and increased visibility. This specialized team calendar streamlines the allocation of resources and scheduling, enabling users to develop extended plans spanning months or quarters. Managers can assign tasks to the whole team (not only to the separate users)with the help of this panel.

The Team mode additionally provides a transparent view of workloads across teams, significantly facilitating comprehensive planning of the entire company. Each team has its own workload indicator separated from the users' indicators:

Personal Workspace

Moreover, the software provides a unique individual workspace for every team member which acts like a personal planning board. Within this designated space, users can examine their personal work schedules, encompassing tasks and projects. Users can leverage a Personal Planning Timeline to establish and oversee tasks, log work (both billable and non-billable hours), define deadlines, track progress, and prioritize assignments according to their preferences.

Timesheet Tracking

In addition to planning boards in ActivityTimeline, users can track worked hours and generate different timesheets for better tracking. The app offers timesheet templates to see how much time each user spends on tasks.

Create issue, epic, project, and user timesheets. Add Jira Filters and export like an Excel file:

Reports & Charts

Moreover, the app also includes many facilitative charts and reports for better resource management. In the report section users will find the resource, project, and other reports, as well as various charts:

Conclusion

Jira planning boards, like Kanban boards, Scrum boards, or other types, are visually intuitive solutions, that can be tailored to various team needs. Jira users can also supplement their planning with the help of Jira plugins, like ActivityTimeline, which is a strategic complement to Jira, addressing critical gaps in resource planning and management.