Kanban board & workflow

[jonathan]

Hello,

I have an issue with some workflow that I try to put in place.

The goal is to have, inside a single project, two type of people accessing it, through two board. One more oriented for business / product owner and another more oriented for the developers.

So the ticket are created with status "new", then dev check it, put some comments & questions, see if the dev take it (statuts "backlog" or "to do") or ask to see if the ticket must be planned inside the roadmap (and go outside the scope of this project) => status "to be validated".

So here is my workflow:

The first board for the "business"

The second board for the "dev" (the only one that have a backlog screen) :

The problem I have, is that when the first process end (so change the status of a new ticket), and the discussion with the BU has finished, we need to put the ticket inside the backlog as backlog status (except some ticket that go directly to "to do") but not in the backlog part but in the ready part (so the top part of the backlog screen).

I have another issue, when I move an issue from the backlog to the top part (ready) the status of the issue change to "blocked".

So is there a way to transition a ticket from any status to ready in the backlog?

How can I change the status that are automatically set of the ready element in the backlog?

[John Funk]

Hey @jonathan  - Did you ever get this solved?

[jonathan]

nope

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Please forgive me, if this is wrong, but it looks like you actually have two different processes for this, one for each type of user (and hence board).

That cannot work for a single issue.

Your use of two boards is a good approach (I often think "board = team", first but "board = view focussed on perspective X" is just as common), but I would go back to first principles on this one.

To frame is a bit; a board is not a container for issues (projects are), it's a view of a selection. The way any board works is determined by the board config and the data on the issue.

So forget the boards and people who will use them for a minute. 

Map out the lifecycle of your issue first.  Pretty much do what the workflow diagram you've shown us is.  Is that diagram correct?  Does it show all possible flows for your issues?

Then, look at people.  Are there arrows (transitions) that change status that some people should not be able to use?  If so, you should add conditions to the workflow that say things like "only Team X can use this transition".  

Finally, go back to your two boards, and map the status into the columns that you need the different teams to see them in.

[jonathan]

Hello,

thanks for the answer, but it didn't really help. The workflow seems fine and the board too. The problem are related to sending an issue to the "ready to use" part of the backlog, with a transition. And when I manually move an issue from the backlog to this part, it's changing it's status to "blocked" for no reason...

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Ok, that tells me your workflow is not built to do what you expect, it's broken (or has misleading names on the transitions)

You'll need to compare your workflow with your desired process flow.

[jonathan]

the workflow seems legit, just backlog option that make bad work

So the main problem is moving from 1 to 2 : the status goes to blocked and that's not normal

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

All I can tell you is that your workflow has a transition into the blocked status, and it is probably mis-labelled.