Projects

Projects are meant for larger initiatives and features you have on your roadmap.

What are projects

Projects define larger pieces of work that have a clear outcome, such as launching a new feature. Each project consists of multiple issues which can be spread across multiple members and even more than one team. You can optionally set a target date, description, and project lead for each project. The project sidebar shows a graph and completion metrics at a glance.

Create projects in the

Roadmap or a team's project page.

How we use projects at Linear

We'll share more in the Linear Method soon, but here are some tips based on how we work:

Write a project brief before starting work. We assign a project lead who writes and gathers feedback on it. Decide on approach and scope the project down at this stage.

Encourage ownership. The project owner is in charge of the brief and general execution of the project. We split up work areas and have project members create their own issues.

Collaborate. Design and engineering work together to finalize the design, often sharing mockups from day one. It should not feel like a sharp handoff. We share more in the Linear Method.

Keep everyone in the loop. We checkin on active projects regularly during meetings and share updates and ask for feedback in Slack. We create a Slack channel for every project (#p-project-name) and set up Linear project notifications for it (read more below).

Accept uncertainty. You may not know the full scope until you've finalized the design or made progress in building it. Bugs, unexpected issues and improvement ideas will happen, too. This is normal and should be accounted for in project planning and timelines.

Set constraints. It can be helpful to set a target date to deter unnecessary scope creep and ensure the project ships in a reasonable amount of time. We write weekly changelogs which encourages a cadence of shipping a new feature each week.

Use Linear for execution not brainstorming. This helps keep your roadmap focus and organized. We only add projects to our roadmap after we've committed to building them. We brainstorm and choose projects at the beginning of each quarter and only then add the projects to the roadmap.

Create a project

Go to the project page or Roadmap to create a new project or take the action create new project in the command menu. The inline editor requires a title and you can optionally set the description, icon, status, target date, team lead, and members. After creating the project, you can click on the more menu (three dots) to edit the project, add teams or members, assign it to a milestone, and favorite or subscribe to it. You can also drag&drop it into a milestone (if

View Options, Ordering & Grouping are set to manual) or create a project directly in the milestone.

Add issues to a project

Click into the project to to create associated issues. Add existing issues quickly by finding them in another list, selecting them, and then assigning them to the project using the contextual menu or keyboard shortcut Shift P. Issues can only be associated with one project at a time.

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ProTip: Have a smaller project? Consider using sub-issues You can break down tasks and group them together under a parent issue. See

Parent and sub-issues

Project sidebar & completion graphs

When viewing a project, clickCmd/Ctrl I or the sidebar button at the top right (next to the create issue button) to open the project sidebar. You'll be able to view or edit project details as well as see project statistics and a completion graph.

The graph shows you the progress you're making toward completing your project. The purple line shows you your velocity toward reaching your goal. A gray line shows you how the project scope has changed over time (e.g. were more issues added). If you have a target date set, it'll show up as a red vertical line.

In time, the graph will also predict an expected completion date, shown as dotted purple lines which form a cone. We calculate this based on the velocity at which issues in the project have been completed so far. More recent work weighs more heavily than past work.

Project notifications

Click on the bell to subscribe to project notifications. You can choose to get personal notifications whenever new issues are added to a project or send issue updates to a specific Slack channel. If you've enabled our

Slack integration, any project links will show a preview with the description, status and target date.

Magic Keyboard Shortcuts

O then P to open a project

Shift P to add a project

Did we miss something? Have a question? Email us at hello@linear.app to let us know.