In this lesson you will learn how to configure the team boards. What we configure applies to all the team boards. Why is that extremely valuable? Because inconsistency is our biggest enemy in PI Planning. We need as much of this as possible, while keeping the user interface simple and easy to use so that our teams can unleash their creativity and value-based thinking. So let’s start with the first setting here. “Allow to move stickies between Team Boards”. If we activate this all the sticky types that are configured to be used on team boards will have an additional button called “Move”. That allows us to move a sticky note from one team to another within this session. My tip, if you basically know that the teams don't have to exchange stories or other stickies with each other, leave it disabled. It makes the interface easier and also reduces unnecessary cognitive load.

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On the team board we can configure up to 18 sticky types to be used by our teams. Again. Less is more. For each sticky type we can set a name, a color, a sticky function and enable the possibility to mirror it to other boards. The name is what the users can see when creating the sticky note. So they pick the right type and so for automatically establish consistency across all team boards which reduces coordination time. Every sticky has a specific color. Then there are four sticky functions. Sticky functions are here to define what this sticky is meant to do. Is it just a note? Or is it a user story? A risk? A Dependency? For each of these types there is a dedicated sticky function. The note is just text. The function “work item” adds an estimation field as well as a status to this sticky note. The risk sticky has a button to set a label for Resolved, Owned, Accepted or Mitigated and it can be moved to the Program Risk board. And last but not least there is the Dependency. The Dependency has the possibility to be sent to another team board and the other team can then add it to the Program Board and visualize it. On the dependency itself you can at any time see which team originally created it and to which team it depends on.

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Let's talk briefly about the mirror function. If we set that you can mirror a sticky to another board, it means that the user has the possibility, important it is only the possibility, to mirror this sticky to the program board, the program risk board or both. Mirror means that this sticky note exists on both boards and if the text, position or status is changed this is also changed on all other boards where this sticky note is. It’s an extremely powerful functionality of piplanning.io because it keeps all boards consistent. BUT my tip. Only activate it if you have a clear use-case in mind. Otherwise you are just adding complexity and the RTE Cockpit is exactly to reduce complexity so your teams can focus on the plan, the conversations and the alignment.

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Now a last little personal tip from my side. I always recommend customers to rename the Risk to Team Risk and to set the Mirror to Risk Board. This way the team can keep the risks visualized on their board and still make them accessible to the whole ART. Press next.

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