JIRA Agile Simplified Workflow - canceled state

[Andreas Heinzel]

We plan on adding an additional state (named: canceled) to the JIRA Agile Simplified Workflow, but before doing so I wanted to check back if any one is aware of any side effects this could have on JIRA Agile and if there is anything special to take care of.

Motivation:

we are migrating from our custom scrum tools to JIRA. The JIRA Agile Simplified Workflow suits almost all our needs, however, over time we got accustomed to also having a canceled state for stories/task allowing us to explicitly mark stories(features) that will not be implemented.

Realization plan:

• Add additional state (name: canceled, associated with category: done) via the board configuration and map it to the Done column
• Modify workflow to add conditions and post functions for the transition to canceled state (via JIRA Administration -> Workflows)
  • Post functions:
    • Set resolution to Won't do
    • Set original time estimate to no value
    • Set remaining time estimate to no value
  • Conditions:
    • Require all subtasks to also be in canceled state (thereby ensuring that their time estimates have been cleared and can not contribute to sum time estimates)

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Accepted solution]

There's a couple of points here.

First, the simple one.  If you are using the JIRA Agile simplified workflow, then your specification is wrong.  The simplified workflow maps status to columns on a 1:1 basis, and allows your project administrators to change the workflow (it's indirect - they do it by changing the columns on the board).  So, to add the cancelled state, one of them would simply add a new "cancelled" column to the board.  That's it.  No "map to the done column", no conditions and post functions, just a new column.

The second one - as you can't do most of your requirement with simplified workflow, what you need to do is de-simplify the workflow.  I would:

• Add the cancelled column to the board
• Take the workflow that has been generated
• Put it in a new workflow scheme 
• Edit the workflow, adding your post-functions and conditions
• Apply the workflow scheme to the project (which removes the "simplfied workflow" option)
• Go back to the board, move the "cancelled" status into the "Done" column, and remove the "cancelled" column

Additionally, I'd test that your two "set time estimate" functions don't mess with your Agile charts.

[Andreas Heinzel]

Thanks, Nic Brough for your elaborate response. Please allow me a follow up question to clarify for myself. Is the motivation for copying the workflow and then reassigning it to the project to ensure that JIRA Agile will not overwrite any of the conditions and post functions in the future? For my understanding we are still using the simplified workflow see screenshot below?

board_config.png

Both statuses Done and Canceled are currently mapped to the Done column which caused the board to look/behave like in the screenshot below.

one_column_two_states.png

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Correct. Although you can have multiple status in a column under simplified workflow, it doesn't really add a lot - most users stick to the 1:1 relationship. It's more that your project admins can still change things and if they do, you could easily lose all your conditions and post functions, Also, the last time I looked, you can't use any that Agile doesn't support, which means you're limited to some of the off-the-shelf ones (which I think can't handle your estimate updates, or your condition)

[Andreas Heinzel]

Thank you once again (and sorry for the late reply - had to wait 24hours to be allowed to comment agagin)! I wasn't aware that there is potentially more functionality for transitions available (for now we used functionality provided by the jira suite utilities for conditions and the Update Issue Field function for clearing time estimates). We will carefully evaluate it further.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Yes, near the bottom of https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/AGILE/Using+JIRA+Agile+Simplified+Workflow there's a statement "Your workflow only uses Post Functions, Validators, and Conditions which are provided by Atlassian (not any which are provided by add-ons);" - that covers the JSU conditions and post-functions - they're not supported in the simplified workflow. The statement is mostly there because the use of them blocks conversion to simplified, but adding them to a simplified workflow after conversion can also cause problems