Simplified Scrum Taskboard States

Talking with old work colleagues about their implementation of the scrum process, the subject of the sprint task board has come up. My team uses a physical task board with each row representing a feature and each column representing a state. Sub-tasks are written on Post-Its and placed on the board in the appropriate state. The states we use are:

• Analysis
• Design
• Implementation
• Testing
• Done

These states reflect the states you would normally find within a unified process iteration. The problem that arises by using these states, I find, is that certain tasks such as bug clearing among other things don't really fit into these categories so they basically have two states: not done and done. This beats the purpose using the taskboard.

What I will propose to my team is a redefinition of the states to something more general which tend more to reflect the likes of the extreme programming practices. The states are:

• Not started
• In progress
• To test
• Done

I find that the four states are much simpler and all types of sub tasks can be fitted in this model; This way, the taskboard is used to its full potential which is to be able to visually see the progress of the work.