What is Zenhub?
A comprehensive project management platform built for development teams and their workflows
Why development teams choose Zenhub
Zenhub brings together all your development work into one place. Instead of jumping between different tools for planning, tracking, and reporting, you get everything in a single platform that understands how development teams actually work.
The platform handles your complete workflow from high-level quarterly planning down to individual bug fixes. You can plan projects, manage sprints, track progress, and analyze team performance without losing context or duplicating work across multiple systems.
Zenhub connects seamlessly with your existing development tools. Your GitHub issues, repositories, and workflow stay exactly where they are, while Zenhub adds powerful project management capabilities around them. This means no migration headaches and no disruption to your established processes.
For developers who prefer working directly in GitHub, Zenhub provides browser extensions for Chrome and Firefox that embed Zenhub directly into github.com. This allows you to minimize context switching while receiving the benefits of advanced project management.
The five main areas of Zenhub
Zenhub organizes your work through five core views, each designed for specific activities in your development workflow.
Goals & Planning Panel is where you structure long-term work. This is your strategic planning hub for creating initiatives, projects, and epics. It keeps high-level planning separate from daily execution, so your sprint boards stay focused on actionable work. Issues in Goals & Planning don't appear on your Work Tracker, maintaining clean separation between strategy and execution.
Timeline provides your scheduling and roadmap view. Here you can see how projects, milestones, and releases align over time. It's essential for release planning, tracking delivery dates, and understanding dependencies between different workstreams.
Work Tracker serves as your team's coordination center. This kanban-style board shows all your active development work as it moves through your workflow stages. It's where sprint work gets managed and where teams coordinate on immediate priorities.
Daily Standup provides your team coordination hub. This view helps teams prepare for and conduct effective daily standup meetings by showing what everyone worked on yesterday, what they're working on today, and any blockers they're facing.
My Work aggregates everything assigned to you across all projects. This personal dashboard helps you prioritize daily tasks, prepare for standups, and maintain visibility into your commitments across multiple workspaces.
Understanding Zenhub's project structure
Zenhub organizes work using a five-level hierarchy that scales from company goals down to individual tasks.
Initiatives represent your biggest goals, typically spanning quarters or years. These align with business outcomes like "Improve user retention" or "Scale platform performance."
Projects are major initiatives that contribute to initiatives, usually taking months to complete. Examples include "User onboarding redesign" or "Payment system upgrade."
Epics break projects into manageable feature sets that teams can complete in weeks. Think "User profile management" or "Notification system."
Issues are your day-to-day development work, completed in days. These include bugs, tasks, enhancements, and user stories from your repositories.
Sub-tasks represent specific work within issues, typically measured in hours like "Write unit tests" or "Update documentation."
This hierarchy flows naturally from strategic to tactical. Goals & Planning displays the top three levels by default, with options to show individual issues when needed for detailed planning.
How Zenhub transforms your development workflow
Zenhub adds powerful organizational capabilities to your existing development work. Story points, effort estimates, and custom metadata enable accurate sprint planning and velocity tracking. Advanced filtering and grouping let you view work by any criteria that matters to your team.
Cross-repository visibility becomes effortless. Create workspaces that span multiple repositories, giving you unified project views even when work is distributed across different codebases. This is particularly valuable for larger projects or microservice architectures.
Sprint planning and milestone tracking work seamlessly with your development cycle. Plan sprints, track burndown, manage dependencies, and coordinate releases without losing connection to your actual development work in repositories.
Reporting and analytics provide insights into team performance, project progress, and delivery patterns. Track velocity, identify bottlenecks, and spot trends that help you improve your development process over time.
When to choose Zenhub
Zenhub works best when you're managing development work that spans multiple repositories, need both strategic planning and sprint execution capabilities, want project management that integrates with your development tools rather than replacing them, or require comprehensive reporting on development metrics and team performance.
The platform excels for teams practicing agile methodologies, organizations coordinating work across multiple development teams, or any environment where development work is central to project success.
Consider alternatives when you're managing primarily non-development projects, prefer completely separate planning and execution systems, need extensive customization of project workflows, or work in environments where development tool integration isn't valuable.
Your daily workflow guide
Different situations call for different Zenhub views. Here's how to choose:
Planning new work? Start in Goals & Planning Panel to create project structure and define epics before moving to execution.
Managing daily tasks? Use Work Tracker to coordinate with teammates and track sprint progress.
Checking project schedules? Review Timeline to understand milestone dates and release coordination.
Prioritizing personal work? Focus on My Work to see all your assignments and plan daily priorities.
Leading team discussions? Combine views strategically. Use Goals & Planning for roadmaps, Work Tracker for sprint ceremonies, Timeline for release planning, and Daily Standup for individual check-ins.
FAQ
Q: Does Zenhub replace my existing development tools?
A: No, Zenhub connects with and significantly enhances your experience working with existing tools like GitHub. Your repositories and issues stay where they are while gaining enhanced project management capabilities.
Q: Can some team members use Zenhub while others don't?
A: Yes, Zenhub works alongside existing workflows. Team members can continue using their preferred tools while Zenhub users access enhanced features.
Q: What happens to my work if I stop using Zenhub?
A: Your issues remain in your repositories along with standard GitHub data (assignees, labels, types, and parent/child relationships). You will lose Zenhub-specific features like enhanced boards with bulk updating, reporting, AI & automation, and specialized views like Daily Standup and My Work pages.
Q: Do I need to change my development process?
A: No, Zenhub adapts to your existing workflow rather than requiring you to change established practices.
Q: Which view should I check first each day?
A: Start with My Work for personal priorities, then Daily Standup and Work Tracker for team coordination.
Q: How do I decide between Goals & Planning and Work Tracker?
A: Goals & Planning handles strategic work (Initiatives, Projects, Epics). Work Tracker manages active development (Tasks, Bugs, Stories).