Issue State

Issue State indicates what is happening with an Issue at the moment.

Overview

What States are defined for an Issue depends on what Type it is. Issue Type can be very simple and there is no more then two States necessary.

In many cases Issue progression is not that simple and need to have more States. For example if Type of the Issue is related to something broken and require fixing you may want to have set of States like following.

This set of States would allow much clearer vision on what is going on with an Issue.

Following diagram of Issue States describes more variations then previous one. It allows more choices in some States resolution which is probably more realistic.

States allowed for Issue Type and their allowed transitions from one to another called "Issue States Flow" in AWorkload system terminology.

Statistics and Queries

Additional benefit of using better defined Issue States is queries and statistics. Queries based on States can give you a very clear vision on what and how much you have for example "Waiting", "Implementing" etc.

This is an example of statistical diagram illustrating numbers of Issues summarized by their State.

This is an example of diagram illustrating amounts of work invested daily in different States. That should give you a vision on structure of your time expenses in time perspective.

Additional options

There are two additional attributes can be set to an Issue State within each Issue Type. They are mutually exclusive and both are optional. Each of those attributes gives Issue State some extra meaning.

• Working State
• End State

Working State attribute

When this attribute is set against an Issue State it is recognized by AWorkload system as the state of actual work is applied. It allows Users to claim working time against this State. In order to understand the meaning of this attribute let's compare two examples of Issue States - "Waiting" and "Repairing". It should be obvious that someone could be Repairing Issues and could not be Waiting it (unless of course Waiting is actual work activity).

End State attribute

This attribute marks States which indicate Issues closure. It allows us to select Issues which no longer require attention and considered finished or done.

- Why not to have just one State named "Done" for that?

- Because there are different possible resolutions like "Done" and "Canceled" for example. Both mean that there is no more attention required, but meaning completely different result. Statistics are much more interesting when there are more meaningful States.