What is Betterplan?
Betterplan is a planning tool for teams that work iteratively. It helps you structure, prioritize, build and evaluate an undertaking, from the big goal down to the smallest task, in one shared picture that everyone refers to.
Why Betterplan?
- Alignment: Everyone on the team sees the same structure. Goals (initiatives) and the steps toward them (epics) sit right above the stories that deliver them, so every task knows what it is for.
- Transparency: Every status is visible at once: How far along is a story, who is working on what, when will a release probably be done? All views work on the same data. What you change in one is up to date everywhere.
- Focus: Experience shows that about 20% of stories deliver 80% of the value. Betterplan makes it easy to close ideas deliberately instead of letting them fade away, and to point the work at what matters.
The four phases
Every undertaking goes through four phases, and not just once: plan, prepare, build, evaluate, and start the next cycle with what you learned. Use the navigation at the top of a project to switch between phases.
| Phase | Question | Main view |
|---|---|---|
| Scope | What do we want to achieve and what belongs to it? | Storyboard |
| Prepare | What matters most, and is it ready to build? | Kanban |
| Build | Who is working on what right now? | Iteration Board |
| Insights | Where do we stand and when will we be done? | Timeline, Progress, Flow |
Some views (for example Roadmap, List or Progress) are rolled out gradually. If you don't see a view yet, it hasn't been enabled for your workspace.
The building blocks
Betterplan distinguishes blocks that create structure from blocks that get built.
- Initiative: a large goal that sets direction. It isn't worked on directly.
- Epic: a sub-goal under an initiative, that is, a step users take toward the goal. It isn't built itself either.
- Story: a concrete piece of work. There are user stories (value for users), project stories (organizational topics) and devteam stories (technical topics).
- Workitem: the smallest unit. It belongs to a story and shows up on the Iteration Board.
A story is either open or closed. While it is open, it moves through Idea, Draft and Ready (discovery) and then Todo, Doing and Done (delivery). You can close it at any time, whether it was delivered successfully or deliberately dropped.
Who is Betterplan for?
- Product owners and project leads structure the undertaking in the storyboard and prepare stories in Prepare.
- Teams build in Build and keep the Iteration Board up to date.
- Stakeholders keep the overview through Insights without having to ask.