Epics, tasks and subtasks

devBoard has three levels of work. An epic is a big piece of work split into smaller tasks. A task is one job on the board. A subtask is a step inside a task. There is nothing to set up. Every project has all three from the start.

How it works

The rules are short:

• An epic sits at the top. It has no parent.
• A task can belong to an epic, or to nothing. Most tasks in a small project belong to nothing, and that is fine.
• A subtask always belongs to a task. It cannot sit under an epic or under another subtask.
• A task and its parent live in the same project.

Epics and tasks are cards on the board. An epic's card shows how many of its tasks are done, like 3/8. Each project also has an Epics screen. It lists every epic with a progress bar, its column, its due date and the people on it.

Subtasks are not cards of their own. They show as short lines under their task, each with its own status. The task's card shows how many of them are done.

Tasks and subtasks have the same fields:

• Title, one line.
• Description, where you can @mention people.
• Priority: none, low, normal, high or urgent. It starts at none.
• Start date and due date.
• Estimate, in hours and minutes.
• Type. A new workspace starts with Feature, Bug, Chore, Spike, Docs and Design.
• Tags (labels), each with its own colour.
• Assignees. Up to ten people can share a task.
• Release, the version it should ship in.
• Parent, the epic or task above it.

An epic has the same list, minus a type and a parent. When work is no longer needed, archive it. It leaves the board and every list, but keeps its history. You can restore it at any time.

An example: Ana

Ana is a freelancer with three clients. One of them is a clinic that wants a booking app. She makes an epic called "Online booking". Under it she adds four tasks: pick a time, fill in the form, pay, and see the booking.

The form task gets three subtasks: name field, phone field and error messages. The epic card reads 0/4. When the first task reaches Done, it reads 1/4. On Friday she opens the Epics screen and tells the clinic how far along the booking flow is.

When the clinic reports a problem, she sets the type to Bug. The bug icon shows on the card, so she can spot every bug on the board without opening one.

What it does not do

• No custom fields. The list above is the whole list, on purpose.
• No links between tasks. You cannot mark one task as blocking another.
• No checklists. Use subtasks instead.
• No recurring tasks.
• No timer on epics. Time goes on tasks and subtasks.
• No deleting. Tasks are archived, so their history stays.

Set it up

Open a project and press New item. Pick Epic, Task or Subtask as the level, then give it a title. For the long version, read how to create epics, tasks and subtasks. To ship a group of tasks together, add them to a release. Or see all devBoard features.