What Atlassian considers correct or what is the correct way to count days in columns?

[Carolina Castro]

I'll take my ACP-620 soon and I'm still confused on how to count days in columns in relation with commulative flow diagrams as, in my mind, I should not see one issue in two different status, at any given time on the diagram.

How do you explain what Atlassian considers correct or what is the correct way to count days in columns?

[Stephen_Lugton · Accepted solution]

Hi @Carolina Castro ,

I had a look at the article about a cumulative flow diagram (CFD) that @Matteo Vecchiato linked; the example given there is fundamentally wrong, which will not help you.

The example is:

1. If you start a sprint with 5 work items, they will begin in the To Do column. If you view the CFD, it will show 5 work items To Do, 0 work items In Progress, and 0 work items Done. 

2. If you then move 2 work items to In Progress, the CFD will display 5 work items To Do (because 5 have passed through that column), 2 work items In Progress, and 0 work items Done. 

3. If you then move 1 work item from In Progress to Done, the CFD will show To Do = 5, In Progress = 2, and Done = 1. 

4. If you then take that 1 work item out of Done and move it back to To Do, the CFD will remove the 1 from Done and remove 1 from In Progress, but the numbers in To Do will remain the same, because no new work items have arrived. Therefore, the CFD will show To Do = 5, In Progress = 1, Done = 0.

Looking at that example it appears that in step 2 there are 7 items in the CFD but there are only 5 work items, so it's counting 2 work items twice.

If an item were in two statuses at once, the data representation would be incorrect and the fundamental principle of tracking work items through a sequential flow would be violated. 

The way a CFD should work is that a single work item can only be in one status at any given time. The diagram tracks the cumulative count of items within each stage of the workflow, meaning an item moves from one stage to the next, it doesn't exist in both simultaneously. 

I have provided feedback about the article

[Matteo Vecchiato]

Hi @Carolina Castro ,

Have you passed through this article: view-and-understand-the-cumulative-flow-diagram ?

Regards

[Carolina Castro]

Yep. Saw it.

[Carolina Castro]

Thanks Stephen and Matteo.

I actually came out with my own way to understand it:

When the issue enters a new status you take a "picture" of it.

- You start with 5 issues in Backlog, the picture will have 5 sissues. 

- 3 issues will transition to the "Ready for Dev" status, so that picture will have 3.

- 2 issues transition to the "IP" status, then that picture will have 2.

- 1 issue will transition to the "Done" status, so that picture will be of only 1.

If the issue in "Done" is transitioned back to "Ready for Dev", it's like it never transitioned, so it's taken out of all the pictures, except "Ready for Dev" as it went back to it.

Totals: Backlog 5, Ready for Dev 3, IP 1, Done 0.

[Stephen_Lugton]

That's a good way of looking at it @Carolina Castro , and another way of thinking about it, instead of using pictures, is to imagine each work item going into a bucket (you can even use grey, blue and green buckets to show the StatusCategory)