Understanding the Scrum board

The Scrum board is what you and your team will be using to plan and run your project. It is both your backlog as well as your sprint activity board. A Scrum board has the following major modes:

• Backlog: The Backlog mode is where you will plan your sprints, organize your backlog, and create issues.
• Active sprints: The Active sprints mode is where your team will be working in a sprint.
• Releases: The Releases mode shows you all the versions (see the later section in this chapter) you have for the project, and the progress for each.
• Reports: The Reports mode is where you can track the progress of your sprint.
• Issues: The Issues mode is the search mode, where you can search for issues in the project with a variety of filter options and advanced search queries.
• Components: The Components mode lists all the components in the project. With Scrum, epics are often used instead of components.

The following screenshot shows a typical Scrum board in the Backlog mode. In the center of the page, you have the backlog, listing all the issues. You can drag them up and down to reorder their priorities. On the right-hand side, you have the issue details panel, which will be displayed when you click on an issue in the backlog:

During the backlog planning meetings, the product owner and the team will use this Backlog mode to add new items to the backlog, as well as decide on their priorities.