Guide for those who moved from Jira to FlowFast

General information about FlowFast

FlowFast is a platform that helps you manage work and processes through their visualization. FlowFast helps you with the following workflow elements:

1. Reflecting tasks and assigning them by status, time, employees; 

2. Tracking the progress of tasks and performance of each team member;  

3. Synchronizing different teams; 

4. Identifying obstacles and problem tasks;

5. Maintaining project reporting; 

6. Creating and collaboratively editing documents. 

FlowFast consists of spaces, boards, cards and documents, and you also have access to graphs and reports on the processes taking place in the spaces. 

The following add-ons/modules are available to users in FlowFast:

1. "Task Management." 

2. "Documents" 

3. "Scrum" 

4. "Kanban" 

5. "Timesheets" 

6. "User Story mapping"

7. "User Group Management" 

8. "Service desk"

If you've moved from Jira, this tutorial will help you navigate more easily through the sections of FlowFast:

Task management in FlowFast

You can manage tasks in FlowFast using different "custom properties" and card actions.

Analog table:

A flag in Jira is used as an abstract notation. That is, it can indicate the priority of a task, its urgency, or something else. In FlowFast, each of these designations has a separate symbol, so that everyone understands the designations in the same way. That is, a flag can be expressed through "ASAP", through a particular tag, through a card type, or through any other "custom property".

In FlowFast, you can block a card in two ways: write the reason for blocking in text or select a blocker card. This will allow all your colleagues to see the reason for blocking, and to see which card is interfering with your task.

How do I build a workflow in FlowFast?

Workflow will allow you to track progress on current tasks and create rules for moving cards around the boards. 

In FlowFast, workflow is built with rules, automations, and patterns in the space. By default, boards are organized in a workflow format, that is, they have columns of different types: queue, in progress, and done. 

You can customize your workflow by creating any card movement rules you want.  

Summary: In Jira you set up template-based workflows in the system, in FlowFast you create custom workflows by writing templates, rules at columns and cards.

How to work with the card hierarchy 

Option 1: Parent and child cards

In Jira, multi-step tasks can be divided and tracked through the Epic function, which is the top of the Jira hierarchy. In FlowFast, you can build a hierarchy of cards by creating parent cards (Epic in Jira) and child cards (Story or Task in Jira). The number of hierarchy steps is unlimited: you can create parent cards for parent cards and child cards for child cards.   

This way you can divide global tasks into lists of subtasks, which, in turn, you can distribute among teams or through which you can go to the goal.

By the way, you can create any type of cards in FlowFast - just specify it yourself or choose from the offered ones. You can learn more about types here. 

Option 2: Boards attached to a space

You can also build hierarchy through space-bound boards - a board, that is located on several spaces simultaneously. The main peculiarity is that it's placed in the usual way on the high-level space, whereas it looks like a side-panel on the left on the space/spaces it's attached to.

Option 3: Lanes

In addition to this, you can build a hierarchy of tasks through lanes. A lane is a horizontal area on the board. Usually they are used to divide tasks by classes or performers. Through them, you can divide tasks into higher and lower priorities.  

Option 4: Task Sequencing in the Timeline

In the "Timeline" section, you can set up the order of the cards by creating links between them.

To add a link, drag the circle on the side of the task and connect it to another task. 

The connection will appear both in the timeline and in the card itself.

Summary: in Jira you are limited to create a hierarchy of tasks, because there are higher and lower levels of hierarchy, in FlowFast you can build a hierarchy of tasks by yourself. 

How to maintain a Knowledge base in FlowFast

FlowFast gives you the ability to maintain your knowledge base in documents built into the system. You can work with all your documents in one place without having to switch to a third-party service. This will make them many times more convenient to use for your tasks.

Learn more about documents in FlowFast.

Summary: FlowFast has documents in different formats - this allows you to maintain your knowledge base entirely in FlowFast. 

How to work with Scrum in FlowFast 

FlowFast has all the features that allow full Scrum teams to work. You can run sprints, divide tasks, track the process, get reports, and even play Poker Planning (Scrum-Poker). You can learn more about all the Scrum features in the "How to Use Scrum in FlowFast" tutorial.   

Kanban Boards 

The structure of the Kanban board in Jira repeats the template structure of the Scrum boards in FlowFast. There's also Backlog, Sprint backlog ("Selected for development" in Jira), "In Progress", and "Done". However, you can line up the Kanban board in FlowFast at your own discretion. 

Adding subcolumns and lanes, setting WIP limits for a column, lane or cell, marking stale cards, and a whole set of reports are also available to work with Kanban in FlowFast:

• Cumulative Flow Chart (CFD)

• Control chart

• Spectral chart 

• Block resolution time

• Throughput 

Reporting

Jira provides basic reporting: reports for Scrum teams, reports for Kanban process optimization for continuous delivery, reports for simple work management.

FlowFast reports: your time report and summary report.

The time report will give you the opportunity to download an Excel report showing how much time and on which tasks you worked. The summary report will give you the ability to use "filters" by time, boards and cards to get full analytics on all work processes. That is, you can see analytics for a particular type of task, for a particular employee, for a particular period of time, and more. 

For teams using Scrum and Kanban, there is a "Velocity" and a "Burndown chart" 

👉 For more information about reporting in Scrum please go to "How to use Scrum in FlowFast" guide