---
title: "Agile Board Enhancements"
canonical: "https://docs.getxray.app/space/XRAY/301435007/Agile%20Board%20Enhancements"
format: markdown
---
Since Xray 2.0, Xray integrates with Agile to give you a flexible way of viewing, managing and reporting some Xray issue types.

Agile boards are an excellent way to visually keep track of the progress of project's tasks.

Usually, you use Agile boards to manage sprint-related issues, such as user stories, tasks and defects.

You can extend the usage of Agile boards to make them also testing-aware.

Agile boards are great, but they do not replace other types of reports where more information may be consulted and analyzed.


> Macro (toc)


# Using Xray issues in Agile boards

Since Xray uses Jira issue types for most of its entities, in theory, you're able to include them in your boards. However, the reason may be different for each one of them.

Having in mind that **Tests** and **Pre-Conditions** are like test case templates, including them in a board does not make sense unless you want to track the specification progress, in case you have a specific workflow implemented for that purpose. The same applies to **Test Sets**. Some may prefer to use one or more Task issue(s) for dealing with the specification effort of Tests and/or Test Sets.

Including individual Test Runs would not be that useful. Since a Test may have multiple runs, your board would be over-populated. Moreover, Test Runs are not issue types so they cannot be included in Agile boards.

**Test Executions** may be assigned to a sprint and may be tracked on a board. However, this may not scale if Continuous Integration is being used, due to the potential huge amount of Test Executions that may be created.

**Sub-Test Executions** are an excellent way to visually identify the associated Test Executions that validate a given requirement, since they're created as sub-tasks for the requirement issue and will appear accordingly in the board. A limitation is that a Sub-Test Execution is a sub-task of only one issue, in this case a requirement. Sometimes, this may not be applicable because it may be necessary to have Test Executions with Tests associated with multiple requirements.

A **Test Plan** tracks a group of Tests, regardless of the number of Test Executions for a given version of the SUT. Test Plans may be used to group the Tests in the scope a given sprint and thus, consolidate the test results.


In sum, you may extend Agile boards for testing purposes to address two points:

- specification & organization
- planning & execution


|  | **Use case** | **Notes** |
| --- | --- | --- |
| **Test** | - track the test specification progress/lifecycle (e.g., a specific workflow is being monitored for reviewing purposes) |  |
| **Pre-Condition** | - track the test specification progress/lifecycle (e.g., a specific workflow is being monitored for reviewing purposes) |  |
| **Test Set** | - track the test specification progress/lifecycle (e.g., a specific workflow is being monitored for reviewing purposes) |  |
| **Test Execution** | - track the daily execution-related tasks
- including "Test Execution Status" custom field provides a quick overview of all the Tests that are part of the Test Execution | - hard to scale, specialy if CI is being adopted |
| **Sub Test Execution** | - per each requirement, track the execution of the related Tests
- including "Test Execution Status" custom field provides a quick overview of all the Tests that are part of the Sub-Test Execution | - hard to scale with multiple executions |
| **Test Plan** | - using scoped Test Plans (i.e., in a context of a sprint) quickly provides an overview of the progress of the execution of your Tests
- including "Test Plan Status" custom field provides a quick overview of all the Tests that are part of the Test Plan | - requires adding the "Sprint" field to the Test Plan |

> Macro (legacy-content)


# Learn More

- [Using Xray in an Agile context](https://getxraydocs.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/XRAY/pages/301677135)