Planned Work

Purpose

This article shows what ticket types and states Scrum and Kanban teams can use to visualize planable work items.

General Principles

"There is only one way to eat an elephant: one bite at a time." If we want to build something big we need to split big tasks into manageable work items.

We pledge to deliver value in smaller iterations, therefore our main focus lies in breaking down work into smaller packages such that each of them delivers value.

To be effective we thoroughly plan and prepare our work before implementing it. Here are the ticket types and states we use.

Issue Types

Project or Product Work

These types use the "Planned Work" workflow. You can view the states and transitions from the Jira ticket’s state drop-down menu → "View workflow".

Type Purpose

Story, Task

A work package of a project or product

Change

A single change requested by a customer

Bug

An existing feature doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to

Maintenance

This type uses the "Maintenance Task" workflow. You can view the states and transitions from the Jira ticket’s state drop-down menu → "View workflow".

Type Purpose Jira Template

Maintenance Task

Task

Maintenance Procedure
Mandatory use!

To ensure effectiveness and work quality in maintenance please adhere to the Maintenance Procedure & Template.

High Level Types

Type Purpose

Epic

A collection of tickets which are part of a larger work package. Epics can be used to track bigger features or projects.

Operations

Used as an alternative to Epics to collect recurring tasks

States

NEW

Newly created tickets get this state. This state is about understanding the subject and doing the initial setup such as linking tickets to the correct epics.

This state is governed by product owners as they need to know about incoming work and decide how to proceed.

REFINEMENT

The ticket should be worked on in the foreseeable future but the expected outcome needs to be clarified.

Questions to be asked:

  • Is the scope ("what") of the ticket defined and clear?

  • Is the ticket estimated or timeboxed?

  • Are priority and budget clear: When do we need to do it and who pays it? Do we have consent from the customer?

ON HOLD

We are confident that this is something we have to or would like to do, but it is unclear when that is supposed to happen.

BACKLOG

The ticket is ready and can be selected to be worked on by the product owner.

SELECTED

The ticket can be worked on either directly (Kanban) or by assigning it to a sprint (Scrum).

IN PROGRESS

The assigned team is actively working on the implementation.

PENDING

The ticket has been started but is currently being held up by something VSHN internal.

WAITING FOR MAINTENANCE

A ticket needs to be handled during maintenance.

The template "Maintenance Task" must be used and correctly applied. A date must be set.

REVIEW

The implementation must be reviewed by another VSHNeer or the customer.

CLOSED

  • Nothing left to be done. Good job!

  • Or ticket has become obsolete.