Orvezo is built around one idea: a small dev team should be able to manage a full sprint workflow without configuration overhead, a dedicated admin, or a two-week onboarding process. This guide covers the core structure of Orvezo so you know what each piece does and how they connect.
Workspaces and projects
When you log into Orvezo you are inside a workspace. The workspace is your organization, the container for all your projects, members, billing, and settings. Most teams have one workspace.
Inside the workspace you create projects. A project maps to a product, a client engagement, a major initiative, or whatever unit of work your team organizes around. Each project has its own backlog, its own sprints, its own epics, and its own board. Projects do not share these things with each other.
You can see your projects in the left navigation under Recent Projects and All Projects. The Jump to project dropdown at the bottom of the sidebar lets you switch between projects quickly without going back to the project list.
Blank projects and templates
When you create a new project you choose between starting blank or using a template. A blank project starts empty with no stories, epics, or sprints. A template creates the project with starter epics, stories, tags, and a starter sprint already in place, so the team has a structured starting point rather than a blank slate.
Template content is only a starting point. After the project is created you can edit or delete any of it, move stories between sections, update epics, and add or remove work as needed. Nothing from a template is locked.
Planning and execution
Inside a project, Orvezo splits the work into two areas: Planning and Execution. This distinction is intentional and worth understanding.
Planning covers everything you do before work is actively in flight. The Backlog tab is where you manage and prioritize your stories. The Sprints tab is where you create, plan, and manage your sprint lifecycle. The Epics tab is where you manage the themes or feature groups that stories belong to.
Execution is where work actually happens. The Board tab shows the active sprint in a To Do, In Progress, Done layout. It is the view developers use during the sprint to see what they are working on, update status, and track progress day to day.
The backlog page
The Backlog tab shows three columns side by side: Parking Lot, Backlog, and Sprint. Each one represents a different stage of readiness.
The Parking Lot is for work that is real but not yet ready for the queue. Ideas, things blocked by dependencies, or work intentionally deferred to a later phase all belong here.
The Backlog is your prioritized queue of work that is well-defined and ready to be picked up. This is where you pull from during sprint planning.
The Sprint column shows the active sprint if one is running. If not, you can use the dropdown at the top of the column to select any sprint you want to view or populate. You can drag and drop stories between all three columns directly on this page.
The backlog page also has filters across the top — Tags, Assignee, Epic, Priority, Blocked, and Due state — that apply across all three columns. You can save filter configurations as named views using the Manage Views button and switch between them with one click.
Stories
A story is the basic unit of work in Orvezo. It represents a discrete piece of work: a feature, a bug fix, a task, a chore. Stories live in one of three locations at any given time: the Parking Lot, the Backlog, or a Sprint.
Each story has a title, a description, acceptance criteria, an assignee, a priority, a status, an estimate in points, a due date if relevant, an epic, and tags. You can also mark a story as blocked and attach files or screenshots directly to it.
Stories are created with the Add User Story button, which appears at the top of each column on the backlog page and on each column of the board. The story defaults to the section you clicked the button in, but you can change its placement from within the story before saving. You can also select multiple stories and perform bulk actions on them — reassigning, changing priority, moving to a different sprint, or updating their epic all at once.
Epics
Epics are the grouping layer above stories. They represent a theme, a feature set, or a workstream that multiple stories belong to. Each epic has a color that shows up on story cards throughout the backlog and board, making it easy to see which workstream a piece of work belongs to at a glance.
Epics are managed from the Epics tab under Planning. You can create, edit, archive, and assign colors to epics there. Archiving an epic removes it from the active list but preserves the stories associated with it.
My Work
My Work is a personal view available from the left navigation. It surfaces your own items across all projects using buckets like Overdue, Due soon, Active sprints, Assigned to me, and Needs attention. It is not a replacement for the board or backlog. It is a focus layer that answers the question: what do I specifically need to be working on right now, across everything I am involved in?
Workspace-level navigation
Beyond individual projects, the left sidebar gives you access to a few workspace-level tools. Workspace Reports provides cross-project visibility. Audit log tracks changes across the workspace for accountability. Settings covers both your personal account settings (profile, security, notification preferences) and workspace-level settings (members and access, billing, usage limits).
Account settings and Workspace settings are different. Account settings are personal to you. Workspace settings apply to everyone in the organization. Both are accessible from the settings gear in the top navigation.
From zero to a running sprint
The fastest path from a new project to active sprint work is straightforward. Create a project and choose blank or template. If blank, create a few epics from the Epics tab to give your work some structure. Go to the Backlog page and add stories into the Backlog column, each with a clear title, description, acceptance criteria, priority, and epic. Create a sprint from the Sprints tab, then drag stories from the Backlog column into the Sprint column on the Backlog page to populate it. Activate the sprint. Go to the Board and start moving work.
That is the whole loop. The subsequent guides in this series cover each piece of it in more detail.