A Transition Exposition

We are often asked about updating a story status when a task or test begins its progress.  While VersionOne chooses to empower the agile team to make these adjustments as opposed to doing it automatically, we do have a feature which many users may not be aware of that can assist with this.  To those who do not know, I introduce the concept of Transitions. Transitions can be found in the Administration /> Configuration /> Transitions tab.

Transitions allow for certain movement of Backlog Items, Tasks or Tests when the Quick Close or Sign Me up actions are performed.    The Transitions page allows you to set the appropriate statuses of those items.  As you can see in the sample image, upon Quick Closing a story, the status will be set to Accepted, the tasks belonging to that story will be set to Completed and the tests will be set to Passed. Once you set them, in order to take advantage of these actions, you can choose them from the action box to the right of each row in our grids, or you can choose them from any of the board views. So, now that you are a master of Transitions, allow me to drop some more knowledge on you.  You may notice when opening the action box, a value for Close and the aforementioned Quick Close.  “Whoa… stop the clock… two options?!” When a user chooses the option to Close an item they have more control over the flow of that item.  They will be presented with the choice of which status the item should go to and furthermore, if you are doing Build Run reporting, you will have the option to assign that story to a particular build.  On the other hand, when you elect to Quick Close a story, you are taking advantage of the Transitions that you have already set up. It’s important to know that in both cases, Close and Quick Close, the action will zero out the hours in the To Do field for any tasks or tests. Search for more information on Transitions and other spring planning/backlog management tips at our VersionOne User Community site. Happy Agile, Everyone!