Item type refers to the kind of work that entails a particular work item. In Zoho Sprints, items types are broadly classified into Story, Task, and Bug. These are the major types of items that are widely identified in project management tools.
Story
In agile methodology, a user story can be defined as a tool that helps describe a feature or a requirement from the customer's perspective. It usually follows a format that describes the type of the customer, what the customer wants, and why the customer wants it. This is beneficial to conceive and develop a customer-centric output
Example
Let's assume your customer is a consumer of your mobile delivery management app. When you're developing a feature, you want to build it around the needs of your customer.
As a user of the delivery management app, I want to customize the view of my previous and current orders based on favorites. This will help me easily place reorders for the preferred items.
Task
A task can be defined as the smallest unit of your project management effort. It is used to identify a specific piece of work that needs to be completed by an individual member or a team of members. You can have multiple tasks to meet a feature requirement or achieve a user story goal.
Example
Let's assume you have a mobile news app targeted at a niche business audience. Your app has news feeds of the stock market, articles on the economy, human interest stories based on the successful businesses, etc. The stock market section must include an alert or notification when the buy or sell indicators are in their decisive stages. This particular requirement can be defined as a task.
Bug
In software development history, a bug is always indicative of an issue. The issue could be a logical or technical glitch that hinders progress of the application or results in errors. The size of a bug varies based on the business and it impact. You can denote the seriousness of the bug using priorities.
Example
Let's assume your customer uses your inventory management software. You have a workflow set up to add new items to the inventory through form submission using API calls. However, due to incorrect usage, a loop of calls get triggered allowing forms to be submitted repeatedly. This can be identified as a bug. Your team needs to find a solution to the looping and implement it to fix this bug.
You cannot edit or delete the default item types.
Create custom item types
You have the option to create custom item types when you need to identify your work items in more specific terms that best describe them. The settings are specific to a project.
To create custom item type:
- Click the gear icon in the top-right corner to navigate to the Settings page.
- Go to Custom Item Type section under Project Settings.
- Click the +Item Type button. The create window will appear.
- Select an icon to be associated with that type.
- Enter a name for the item type.
- Provide a description.
- Select a default item type based on which the custom item type will be created.
- Click the Create button. The new item type will be added to the listing page.
- You can associate your items to this custom item type.
You can reorder the sequence of the item types. Drag and drop the item types and edit the sequence numbers to reorder. This sequence will reflect in the item type drop-down list while creating work items.
Edit custom item types
To edit custom item type:
- Click the gear icon in the top-right corner to navigate to the Settings page.
- Go to Custom Item Type section under Project Settings.
- Hover on the required item type.
- Click the Edit link. The update window will appear.
- Modify the required details.
- Click the Update button. The changes will be saved.
You cannot change the default item type.
The change will reflect in the items that are already associated with this item type.
Delete custom item types
To delete custom item type:
- Click the gear icon in the top-right corner to navigate to the Settings page.
- Go to Custom Item Type section under Project Settings.
- Hover on the required item type.
- Click the Delete link. A confirmation pop-up will appear with the request to move associated items to another item type.
- Select another item type and confirm. The item type will be deleted and the items previously associated with this item type will be moved.
View and assign item type
To view and assign item type:
- Go to the required project.
- Select an item. The item details page will appear.
- Select an option in the Item Type field.
You can assign item type while creating the work item.