Using Kanban boards, how can I signal a work item is ready to be pulled by the downstream stage?

[vdastpak]

Hi,

Is there a way to indicate that the work on a work item in the current Kanban column is completed and it's ready to be pulled into the next column? I can't seem to find anything short of creating a "ready for pickup" column between the two stages.

Say I have a development or "In Progress" stage followed by a Review stage. Developers who finish their work on an implementation task need to inform the reviewers or show on the board that the code is ready for review (i.e. the work item can be pulled into the next stage by the reviewer). They, of course, are not supposed to push it to the next column themselves as it defies the whole purpose and concept of Kanban.

Thanks,

Vahid

[Steve Jones]

We're using flags. When something is done, we right-click the item and select 'Add Flag'. The item changes color and displays the flag. That can be your pull indicator.

[Peter Van de Voorde]

Or you could add some extra statusses (Ready for Dev, Ready for QA,...) and create some more columns based on those statusses. So you can simply drag the issue in the the 'Ready for...' column as an indication for the following stage that the issue is ready to be picked up.

Best regards,

Peter

[Steve Jones]

I agree, because the columns give you an actual state/status for the ticket, but it sounded like Vahid did not want to use the extra columns.

[Peter Van de Voorde]

I wanted to give him a second option, my first idea was also to use flagging :)

[reinhard_weber]

Setting up extra columns for cards ready to be pulled will not really work if you are using wip-limits for your columns (and are serious about it). The two combined columns like "dev in progress" and "ready for Testing" would also need a combined wip-limit which is not supported by Jira.