Scrum tasks for stories in CWM
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Summary of Scrum tasks for stories in CWM
In Collaborative Work Management (CWM), scrum tasks enable ServiceNow customers to break down user stories into smaller, manageable units of work. This granularity helps teams estimate effort, assign tasks, and track progress throughout a sprint. Scrum tasks are always linked to their parent user story and cannot exist independently on the board.
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Creating Scrum Tasks
Scrum tasks can be created manually or generated automatically using Now Assist:
- Manual creation: After saving a story, a Scrum Tasks tab appears on the story form where tasks can be added by entering titles and details. Tasks can also be created inline from List and Sprint planning views.
- AI-generated tasks with Now Assist: Now Assist analyzes the story’s description and context to suggest scrum tasks. Users can review, regenerate, edit, and insert these tasks to accelerate task breakdown.
Using Scrum Tasks on the Kanban Board
Stories with associated scrum tasks display an indicator icon on their Kanban card. Selecting this icon opens a side panel showing task details without leaving the board. Quick filters enable teams to focus on specific sprints or states, improving visibility during daily stand-ups and sprint execution.
Important Considerations and Limitations
- Scrum tasks cannot exist independently and always belong to a parent story.
- When a story moves between sprints, its scrum tasks move automatically as well.
- Reordering scrum tasks is only possible within the parent story; they cannot be dragged, dropped, or copied outside their story.
- Percent complete is tracked only for CWM tasks and does not roll up from scrum tasks to parent stories.
- Scrum tasks are not shown in the Backlog section, only within the sprint section of Sprint planning views.
- Deleting a scrum task removes it from CWM view but does not delete the underlying record.
- Scrum tasks cannot be added if the scrum task work type is disabled or if the user has viewer-only access to the CWM Board.
- Importing stories through Connected Work brings in associated scrum tasks automatically, but scrum tasks cannot be imported directly.
- To avoid duplicate scrum tasks after upgrading to version 9.0.0, remove existing scrum task configurations in Connected Work.
Practical Benefits for ServiceNow Customers
By utilizing scrum tasks in CWM, teams gain detailed visibility into the individual steps required to complete user stories, facilitating better estimation, workload distribution, and sprint progress tracking. The integration of AI-powered task generation saves time on manual breakdown, while Kanban board enhancements provide quick access and filtering to optimize daily agile workflows.
Extend your agile workflow in CWM by breaking user stories into scrum tasks, giving your team the granularity needed to estimate effort, distribute work, and track daily progress through a sprint.
In CWM, scrum tasks represent the individual units of work that make up a user story. While stories capture a feature or requirement from the user's perspective, scrum tasks break that story into steps that team members can pick up and complete independently during a sprint. Scrum tasks are always associated with a parent story and aren't a standalone work items on the board.
Creating scrum tasks
You can create scrum tasks manually or use Now Assist to generate them based on the story content.
- Manual creation
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After a story is saved, a Scrum Tasks tab is available on the story form. From this tab, you can add tasks by entering a title and any relevant details directly on the story. You can also create scrum tasks for stories inline from the List and Sprint planning views. For more information, see Add scrum tasks to a story in CWM.
- AI-generated scrum tasks
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Now Assist can analyze the story description and context to suggest a set of scrum tasks. The Create with Now Assist button on the story form and the inline sparkle button on the Scrum tasks tab both trigger generation. You can review the suggestions, regenerate if the results don’t fit the story, and then insert the tasks. AI-generated tasks serve as a starting point and can be edited after they're created. For more information, see Generate scrum tasks for a story with Now Assist for CWM.
Scrum tasks on the Kanban board
When a story has one or more scrum tasks, a scrum task indicator icon appears on the story's Kanban card. Selecting the icon opens a side panel that shows the scrum tasks for that story, so team members can view task details
without leaving the board.
Quick filters on the Kanban board let teams focus on specific sprints, states, or other columns. Multiple filters can be active at the same time, and a counter at the top of the board shows how many filters are currently applied. This makes it easier to track sprint-specific work during daily stand-ups and sprint execution.
Scrum task considerations and limitations
- Scrum tasks belong to a parent story and can’t exist independently as standalone work items on the board.
- When a story is moved from one sprint to another, the child scrum tasks also move to the new sprint.
- You can reorder scrum tasks only within its parent story.
- Scrum tasks can't be moved (drag and drop) or copied outside its parent story.
- Percent complete isn’t rolled up from scrum tasks to the parent story. Percent complete is tracked only for CWM tasks.
- When a story is imported through Connected work, its associated scrum tasks are brought in automatically along with it. Scrum tasks can’t be imported directly through Connected work.
- Scrum tasks can’t be assigned to a sprint independently. They inherit the sprint of their parent story. When you change the sprint for a story, all associated scrum tasks move to the new sprint automatically.
- Scrum tasks aren’t displayed in the Backlog section of the Sprint planning view. They’re shown only in the sprint section.
- Sprint information can't be edited on a scrum task record.
- Deleting a scrum task in CWM doesn’t delete the underlying record. It's only removed from viewing in CWM.
- You can't add scrum tasks if the scrum task work type is disabled in your ServiceNow instance.
- You can't add scrum tasks if you have just the Viewer access to the CWM Board.
- If scrum tasks were previously imported through Connected work before upgrading to v9.0.0, and stories are then imported through Connected work after the upgrade, duplicate scrum tasks may appear on the board. To resolve this, remove the existing configuration for scrum tasks in Connected work for your Board.