Task

Plorma task editing
Name
Every task must have a short name which ideally sums up the task in a few words. The name is used in the task overview to identify the task.
Tags
The tasks can be tagged with different tags to help organising the tasks. The tags will be displayed in the task overview. Tags can only be created by User with the role productowners.
Assignee

A task can be assigned to other users. Assigning a task to a user means that this user is responsible to work on the task.

If a task has no assignee than it can be be taken by others.

Task State
The States and Resolutions can be set in . Some of the fields will become a required field based on the current state and selections. So the Resolution field will become a required field when switching into the resolved state.
Comments
Users can add comments to give further information, or document their proceed. Comments are readable by all users.
Priority

The priority (Weight of a task) will influence the order of the task in the task overview or product backlog.

Priority Description
immediate Must be fixed immediately (means: “Drop any other work”). Reports must have an assignee set in the “Assigned to” field.
very high Should be fixed as next task by maintainers and certainly before the next release.
high Not the next task, but should be fixed soon. Depending on teams & manpower this can take between one and six months.
normal Medium priority; would be good to get fixed somewhere in the future. Contributed patches might speed fixing up.
low This can be fixed, but we’re not going to worry about it. Patches very welcome and required for progress.
very low This can be fixed, but we’re not going to worry about it. Patches very welcome and required for progress.

Usually only the priorities from very low to very high should be used for task planning.

The immediate priority is a special one. It should only be used in very rare cases as it really means that any other work should be dropped which may affect running sprints.

Severity

Severity Description
Blocker Blocks further development and/or testing work
Critical Crashes, loss of data (internally, not your edit preview!) in a widely used and important component.
Major Major loss of function in an important area.
Normal Default/average
Minor Minor loss of function, or other problem that does not affect many people or where an easy workaround is present.
Trivial Cosmetic problem like misspelled words or misaligned text which does not really cause problems

Estimation

The estimate indicates how much work remains to be done until the task is completely resolved. The estimate can be selected from a simplified Fibonacci sequence to regard larger inaccuracy in complex tasks.

The estimate does not have any time unit like hours. It is a abstract estimate and needs to be interpreted individual. The estimate can be used as Story Points in a Scrum development process.

Sprints
The sprint listing will show a list of Sprints which are currently in the planning state. You can assign tasks to more than on sprint.

Lifecycle

Plorma task lifecycle

States

State Description
New Initial state for all new created tasks. Nobody has looked into the task nor it has been checked to be a valid.
Open The tasks has been checked to be valid. However the task has not been assigned to someone yet. But based on its Weight of a task it is queued to be worked on.
Assigned The tasks has been assigned to a developer. He will start to work on the task based on its priority.
Resolved Work on the task has been finished with on of the possible. Resolved tasks may need some QA are acceptance tests. Resolutions.
Verified The resolution has been accepted by the QA. Last steps can be made to finally close the task. Verifying the solution of a task will set the remaining estimate to 0.
Closed The final state of a task. The task has been resolved the QA has approved the resolution. The resolution has been communicated to all relevant parties. Closing a task will set the remaining estimate to 0.
Reopen Indicates that an issue has been reopened for some reason. This my be a failed QA or later upcoming issues with the solution. Reopening the task will set the estimate to a unknown value to enforce the user to set a new value for the estimate.

Resolutions

Resolution Description
Done Task is done and is ready for QA.
Works for me Can not reproduce the defect or issue. Everything works as expected.
Need more info It is unclear what exactly to do here. More information is needed before the work can continue here.
Won’t do Task will not be resolved for any reason.
Duplicate Task is duplicate of another task.
Invalid Task is invalid and will not be done for any other reason the formed named resolutions.

Tasks currently under “Test”

You may think that the lifecycle of a task is missing the explicit state that the task is currently under test by someone. Well, of course Plorma provides a way to indicate that a task is currently under test.

Plorma differs between two “states” of the state done. If a task is marked as done the assignee will be removed automatically. This is because the origin assignee has decided that the task is either finished or the work can not proceed for any other reason. However in this situation the origin assignee is considered not to be responsible for the task anymore. (This is probably what the assignee actually thinks when marking the task as resolved) This is the first state: A task which is done and has no assignee. The task is waiting for someone who will pickup the task e.g for QA.

The way Plorma marks a task to be currently under test is to set a new assignee to the task. A resolved task which is assigned to someone means that his person will do whatever is needed to make the task proceed into the next state (verfied, closed). This can be doing the QA but might also be something different.

Weight of a task

The prioritization of the task is calculated based on its Priority (think of importance) and its severity. The calculated value is called the Taskweight. The Taskweight is used in the task overview are prioritization criteria.

If either the priority or the severity is not set, than the weight can not be calculated and is unknown.