Agile workflow diagram and status transitions

[Nicola Barton]

Hi

I'm a new user and recently set up a project and board on JIRA Agile with an Agile Simplified Workflow.

I added 2 extra steps and now have the following columns in that order, each with matching status:

To Do - In Progress - In Peer Review - Need PR Changes - Done

When I go to an issue and select 'View Workflow', it brings up a workflow with a different order and no flow.Screen Shot 2015-04-16 at 12.02.15.png

When I go to Issues > Workflows, I can see that I can change the order there. When I try to add the 'flow' with a transition, I can see that I can use an existing one. I think this is correct as this will map to existing issues on the board. However, it tells me a transition already exists between these statuses.

If I create a new transition, what impact does it have on the existing issues?

Screen Shot 2015-04-16 at 12.37.26.png

Also, I'm not fully clear on what these means for the workflow, is it now no longer an Agile Simplified Workflow? What is the impact of that?

Finally, if I want to change the workflow so that a status of "Needs PR changes" can only be changed from an issue at "In Peer Review" status, how do I go about this?

Thanks in advance.

[Nicolas Bourdages · Accepted solution]

See how there's an arrow that says "All" leading into each status? These are global transitions, meaning that you can move from any status to any other status that has a global transition. In other words, there is no order to your workflow, however you move the diagram boxes around. Issues start at "To Do" and can go anywhere from there.

As to the second point, when you're trying to re-use a transition, you're re-using the global In Progress transition. I'm not entirely sure why you would like to re-use a transition, unless you have customized it with post-functions and validators.

So basically, my advice is this:

1. Read the doc on workflows: https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRA063/Configuring+Workflow
2. Remove all those "All" global transitions
3. Create status-to-status transitions to create the actual flow you want to enforce (from To Do to In Progress, from In Progress to Peer Review etc...)
4. Tip: Don't forget to plan transitions to move backwards in your workflow, otherwise you might get stuck.

"Agile Simplified Workflow" is just a name. It's a sort of "beginner" workflow, and modifying the transitions as you like has no impact on your issues. Removing a status from the workflow would force you to map issues with that status to another one, but JIRA does all the work, so you only need to follow instructions.

Cheers