Subtask order on Agile work board with Assignee swimlanes

Moriah Chandler

We use our work board as a task board for each user. When they come in each morning, they look at the list of things they need to work on and must respect the order (ranking) because other people's work depends on the completion of their task. For example, we may have an art asset that needs work done on it by 5 people. So, at the moment, we create a story with 5 subtasks.

Here is the problem. A subtask shows up on the work board based on its parent's rank. In some cases, this is fine. In other cases, I need Person1 to work on subtaskA from ParentX BEFORE subtaskA from ParentY. While I need Person2 to work on subtaskB from ParentY BEFORE subtaskB from ParentX. Because of the strict adherence to Parent rank, I can't reorder the subtasks from different parents for each user.

Is there any way around this?

Kim Poulsen

To my knowledge "no" - if you want to use sub-tasks.

You could take things a step up and use Epics per feature, and stories per task. Reserve sub-tasks for each individual's own prioritised list of things to do to solve the task at hand.

Here we use Epics as "feature stories" which are usually somewhat large entities. Stories are used for the feature work breakdown and prioritised and ranked for importance and interdependencies. Sub-tasks are used at the liberty of the individual designer to have stuff flying across the board and help communicate where in the solving process he/she is.

Epics can in turn be grouped in Themes (which is essentially a label) if you like.

Regards,

Kim