Sprints & agile
ActionConnect supports a Jira-style agile workflow for teams that plan in iterations: epics, stories, subtasks, a backlog, sprints, story points, and velocity and burndown charts.
The agile hierarchy
- Epics — large bodies of work that span multiple sprints.
- Stories — deliverable units of work that belong to an epic.
- Subtasks — the granular steps that make up a story.
This hierarchy lets you plan at a high level (epics) while executing at a detailed level (subtasks), with progress rolling up.
The backlog
The backlog is the ordered list of work not yet committed to a sprint. Groom it by prioritizing, estimating, and refining items so the team always has a ready queue to pull from.
Sprints
A sprint is a time-boxed iteration with a start date, an end date, and a sprint goal. To run a sprint:
- Create the sprint and set its dates and goal.
- Pull items from the backlog into the sprint.
- Work the sprint board (a Board view filtered to the sprint).
- Close the sprint; unfinished items return to the backlog or roll to the next sprint.
Story-point estimation
Estimate items in story points to size relative effort. Points feed the team's velocity and burndown metrics.
Velocity and burndown
- Velocity — how many story points the team completes per sprint, used to forecast how much can be committed next time.
- Burndown — remaining work over the course of a sprint, so you can see mid-sprint whether you are on track.
Both appear as charts driven by the sprint's items and their story points.
Tips
- Keep estimates relative, not hour-precise; let velocity calibrate over time.
- Use a saved sprint board view per active sprint.
- Link sprints' work to goals so leadership sees how iteration output ladders up to outcomes — see Projects.