How to set an issue to BLOCKED in Scrumboard?

[Robert Poddar]

Hi, 

Whenever there's an impediment / blocker to an issue, we would like to set the status of that issue to "Blocked" and once this is resolved, then change the issue status to "In progress". By this way, eventually we would like to get a metric as to how long the issue was in blocked state. 

I understand that one can set the issue status to Blocked for a Kanban board. How to do the same for the Scrum board? How to include a "BLOCKED" swimlane, so that we can see the list of ticket which are in Blocked state through the Active Sprint view. 

We are using the JIRA Cloud. 

thanks 

Robert.

[Beejal _London_ · Accepted solution]

Hi @Robert Poddar

The workflow your issue type is using will need to transition from a status to Blocked, so you will need to add a new status of 'blocked' to do this.

You however have a couple of options:

• Use the 'impediment' flag - might not be the best option especially if you'd like to build some stats, as you said.
• Add a new status 'Blocked' and add another column to the board for 'blocked'

[Robert Poddar]

Hi Beejal, 

Thanks for your inputs. The "Flag" that Warren has suggested, is it the same as what you are referring to "Impediment" flag? 

Is it possible to change the ticket workflow to include a "Block" status? if this is possible, then any idea as to how this can be done? 

thanks 

Robert

[Beejal _London_]

Hi @Robert Poddar

Sorry for my delayed response.

That is indeed the same. I embedded a link to the Atlassian page describing this above, hopefully this worked for you?

It is possible to update and change the workflow but to do this you will need to be the Jira Administrator, do you have those permissions? Here's a link to the Atlassian instructions for how this is done.

Once you've added the extra status you'll need to make sure you add a new column to your board and then map the 'blocked' status to that.

Please let me know if you need any help with this.

Beejal

[Robert Poddar]

Hi Beejal, 

I am not a JIRA Admin. I discussed with with my Engineering Manager, who is a JIRA Admin, and he was able to implement the workflow to include the "Block" status. 

One thing i am not sure whether this "updated workflow" can be made applicable to existing tickets, or will this come into effect only for newly created tickets? 

Thanks a lot for your inputs.. 

Robert

[Warren]

Hi Robert

Any changes like this will immediately affect every ticket for that project

[Robert Poddar]

Hi Warren, 

Ok..thanks for the clarification. 

Robert

[Warren]

Hi Robert

Your saying you want a Blocked status but I'm not sure that's what you're after. 

If you right click on a ticket on the board, one of the available actions is to Add Flag. This is standard Jira functionality, which sets a flag marking it as an Impediment, colours the card in yellow and shows a red flag - see screenshot below

You could then create a swimlane which checks this flag so that all flagged tickets appear together.

Note : this is just a toggle, so to get rid of it you would again right click on the ticket and there is an action Remove Flag.

What this doesn't address is your other requirement of being able to see how long it has been in that state. The changes (Flag added or Flag removed) will show in the history and can be queried via the REST API, if that is the route you're planning on taking

[Robert Poddar]

Hi Warren, 

Thanks a lot for your inputs. The objective of having the issue status = Blocked, is that anyone looking at the issue, will know that it is currently blocked and not "in progress". By having "In progress", means that work is ongoing, but in actual it is in blocked state. 

As you indicated that i can use the Flag option and in the history, we will know how long this ticket was in "blocked" state.  

Will try this out and see if it helps, but reading through your suggestion, looks like i have got my answer. 

thanks 

Robert.