Having a Done status isn't the same as having a path to it

[#1]

I'm Cameron, founder of Workflow Linter for Jira. This is a small synthetic example from our demo, not a customer workflow.

I would have assumed that having a "Done" status meant there was a way for work to reach it. This example made that distinction clearer to me.

Here's the starting point:

Create -> To Do -> In Progress

Done exists, but no transition leads to it.

Work can enter To Do and move to In Progress. From either of those statuses, there is no directed path to Done in this example.

Adding one transition, Complete, gives it that path:

Create -> To Do -> In Progress -> Done
                              Complete

Seeing exactly which connection is missing is much more useful than just getting a score. I'd want the report to explain the possible problem and leave the decision about what to change to me.

That decision still matters. A terminal state can be intentional, and a structural path does not tell us whether permissions, validators or the business process are correct. Workflow Linter reports structural findings without changing the workflow; it doesn't make that judgment for the administrator.

For context, the app used for this example is Workflow Linter for Jira.