1. An Introduction to the Portfolio lane
The Portfolio lane is an additional swimlane on your board, where you can visualize your Initiatives and track their progress. The Portfolio lane supports the top-down management scenario and holds the Initiative Workflow (1) where all the Initiatives live.
An initiative is a bigger task or a project which you need to break down into smaller work items in order to complete. An Initiative could be a Project/Feature/Epic story, etc. The small tasks, which represent the deliverables are linked to the Initiative as child cards. They are located on the Cards Workflow (2) and they are executed by the Team.
For more information, please watch the video: "How to use Initiative Workflow".
2. How does the Initiative Workflow work?
When you move a child card linked to an Initiative to the "In Progress" column on the Cards Workflow lane (Team Board level) -> the Initiative card will automatically move to "In Progress" on the Initiative Workflow lane.
Each Initiative has a progress indicator that shows the percentage of the completed cards. When all child cards, linked to the Initiative are moved to "Done" on the Team Board, the Initiative progress indicator will become 100% and the Initiative card will automatically move to "Done" on the Portfolio Lane.
To learn more about the Initiative, please read the following dedicated article.
3. How to manage the Portfolio lane?
The Portfolio Lane of the board can be managed only by Administrators or Project Managers.
The Portfolio/Initiative lane is available upon board creation. To change some of its settings, please open the Edit workflow mode of the board.
From the top right side of the panel, you can Enable/Disable the Initiative Workflow.
Note: If the Initiative workflow lane gets disabled -> it will be no longer visible for the team members.
The system also allows you to make the lane:
- Non-collapsible - this action will restrict team members to collapse/expand the lane.
- Collapsible - this action will allow team members to collapse/expand it.
4. The Initiative Workflow view
The Portfolio Lane consists of the three main columns "Requested", "In Progress" and "Done".
With the Edit Workflow designer, you can add additional lanes, but you cannot change the columns structure e.g. adding new columns/subcolumns.
5. How to freeze the Initiative Workflow lane?
To freeze the Initiative Workflow -> use the pin icon located on the top left side of the board and you will be able to scroll through the board and still see the Portfolio lane at the top.
This will improve the overall visibility and will facilitate the Initiatives -> Tasks breakdown process.
Please, check the following article to learn how to create an Initiative.