Releases

This tutorial helps understand how Timebook handles the concept or Releases in product delivery.

In Timebook, releases combine the traditional definition of software release cycle with a wider strategic approach to product delivery. Depending if you're a Team Leader or a Product Manager, you could treat them as a final collection of items released in a development cycle, or a roadmap of features and user stories leading to a designated goal.

Configuring releases

In order to use the sprints you must first activate them in your team settings under Planning → Releases.

Working with releases

In their assumptions, releases are similar to sprints. If you have worked with sprints before, you should be comfortable with releases right from the start.

Contrary to Sprints which usually contain smaller-scale work items, Releases are thought as a broader container for larger objects. This might include features assigned to a specific goal, or a collection of items delivered in a sprint from several different teams.

For example, you can create a release that will include sprints from a back-end team, and a front-end team.

Creating a release

1

Go to Planning → Releases and click 'Create first release'.

2

Enter the details of the Release: name, description, date range in which the release should be ready, team responsible, and the product it refers to:

New release configuration

3

You can add more releases using the + button on the Releases overview tab:

Add button location for new sprints

Adding items to releases

Method 1: Property

The most straightforward way to add an item to a release is by using the dedicated property in the right panel:

Adding items to releases with properties

Method 2: Drag and drop

Once your workload in Timebook grows, you can assign items simply by dragging and dropping them across lists of tasks grouped by the 'Release' property.

This method is applicable to any selected property across the whole system.

1

First, you need to properly group work items on the list. Go to Delivery → Work items and click 'Manage view'.

2

Set grouping to Release and apply filtering and sorting as desired. On the example below, you can see items sorted by item type (bugs & user stories):

Grouping work items by releases

3

Now you can grab tasks and drag them over to the desired release:

Dragging items across releases

Releases overview

The default view of Releases is timeline. It provides key information on the progress and items contained, together with a visual representation of the release cadence in the selected time frame.

Release details explains