Welcome! In this session, we’ll introduce you to Linear’s core concepts. You’ll learn about how to organize your workspace and create your first project.

Before you start using Linear, it’s helpful to know that Linear is purpose-built for product teams. That means that we build it with the needs and best practices of product teams in mind.

You should also know that Linear is fast and is built to be intuitive. You can take most actions using keyboard shortcuts or our command menu. Use the New Agent tab to collaborate directly with Linear.

Managing your organization⁠

Your Linear workspace represents your entire organization or company.

Invite your teammates to Linear as members.

Your workspace members are then organized into teams. Teams can reflect your org chart (e.g. Engineering, Design, Product), but can also be used to group together people who work on similar product surfaces, or on similar timelines (e.g. EU Engineering, Mobile).

If you’re setting up your organization’s Linear workspace, start here. If you’re joining an existing workspace, start here.

Managing work⁠

Issues are the most discrete level of work in Linear. They represent small, concrete tasks and usually take a matter of hours or days to complete. It should be clear when an issue is started, in progress, and done.

Projects are a collection of issues. They typically map onto a feature or launch and may take a matter of weeks or months to complete. Multiple teams can collaborate on a single project, but every project only has one lead.

Get started with a project by writing your project spec in the project overview, attach project documents, and linking to external resources. When you’re ready, convert bullet points into issues and assign them to your teammates.

Projects can then be broken into milestones which organize issues into more manageable timelines. We often see these used to plan launch phases.

Initiatives organize projects and set overarching product direction. Initiatives are the top-level goals or objectives at your organization that could take a quarter or several quarters to complete. Initiatives show how your company is tracking towards goals as a whole. They can also help your team make decisions about which projects to prioritize in the short term to drive active initiatives forward, and which projects to move to the backlog.