All work items in a Smart project run through the work item lifecycle, that goes from the moment the work items is issued until the moment it has finished and approved. This straightforward lifecycle contains the following steps:
- New. A new workitem is identified. All these workitems are not in focus for the development team. These workitems might be picked up in next iterations
- In Iteration. The analyzed work item is prioritized to be realized in the coming iteration. In the planning meeting with the user (representatives) these work items are planned to do in this iteration. These workitems are not picked up yet
- Working. The work item is being developed (and tested). All the work items in this stage should be assigned to one of the members in the development team. It is possible that more people are working on this work item, but only one member is assigned.
- Testing. The work item is ready to be tested by the user representatives.
- Rework. The work item has been tested by the user representatives, but needs rework. Now the work item goes back to development.
- Accepted. The work item is finalized and accepted by the user representatives.
- Dropped. Occasionally user representatives desire to drop work items. This in normally due to the fact that new insight changes the requirements. Work items that are dropped are put in this stages. The will not be delivered.
Originally this lifecycle was set out to capture the lifecycle of smart use cases. However, since we use the Trinidad Dashboard to administer this lifecycle, it also appeared useful on other project work items, such as creating an estimate or rethinking the software architecture. Ever since then we use it for all our work items, it being smart use cases or project work items.
Sander Hoogendoorn
In addition to these defined steps, some projects add other steps to the process. These could be useful in specific situations.
We split up the Testing step into two separate steps for a project where the customers sat at another location than the development team. Here we had Team Testing and Customer Testing, which worked well on that occasion.
Robert de Wolff