Your First Project

This walkthrough helps you set up a workspace and start tracking real work.

1. Create a workspace

Create a workspace for the team, product, or initiative you want to manage. Give it a name your team will recognise and pick the item types and workflow you want to start with. You can change these later.

Good first workspaces:

  • Website redesign
  • Mobile app
  • Customer support
  • Internal platform
  • Customer implementation

A workspace owns its own backlog, board, item types, workflow, members, custom fields, pages, tests, and settings.

2. Add your first work items

Start with a small set of real work. You do not need to model your entire process on day one.

Useful first work items:

  • A task someone is already working on
  • A bug that needs triage
  • A feature idea for the backlog
  • A follow-up from a customer conversation

A new item in the workspace backlog

3. Use the backlog for upcoming work

The backlog is where you collect and prepare work before it becomes active. It holds items that have no iteration assigned. Add enough context that someone else can understand the item later.

At a minimum, give each item:

  • A clear, action-oriented title
  • A short description of the expected outcome
  • A priority or ordering position
  • An assignee when ownership is clear

4. Move active work into delivery

When the team is ready to deliver an item, assign it to the current iteration (or move it directly into an active status). The board shows where each item is in the workflow, for example To Do, In Progress, Review, or Done.

If your team does not run iterations, you can work straight from the board: pull from the top of the backlog, change status as the work progresses.

5. Open work items for details

Open an item to discuss it, update fields, change status or priority, log time, link related items, attach files, or inspect history. The detail view is where the full context of the work lives.

6. Keep the first setup simple

Windshift supports custom item types, fields, workflows, customer portals, tests, pages, time tracking, and integrations. For a first project, keep the process small:

  1. Create the workspace.
  2. Add real work.
  3. Keep statuses current.
  4. Review the backlog regularly.
  5. Add more structure (item types, custom fields, iterations, portals) only when the team needs it.