I have heard of the blocking condition in the past - in connection with Agile/Scrum. I see information about it online but what THING is supposed to be subject to that condition? An epic? an issue? A user story? A task? All of the above? And when and why?
hi @blahboybaz !
In Taiga any entity may be BLOCKED. You can see the lock icon in epics, user stories, tasks and issues.
Typically, blocking an entity is used to make visible that there is a blocking condition, for example, the task “configure blog” is blocked due to “waiting for DNS configuration”.
Sometimes the block is a pre-condition and it’s just a matter of priorization; but other times, you start working on something and find a block; in this ocasions, you may use the BLOCK feature to make it visible, as a reminder.
That said, this is only a scenario, and you may find creative ways of using this BLOCK feature that fit your team’s needs.
Cheers!
Ok I get that. I think what I was wondering is if it makes less (or no) sense to block certain kinds of entities. For example…
- Would it make sense to block all types of entities in the same project or is it better to decide on one or two kinds of entities that you will allow to be blocked and refuse to do it to others? Why?
- Does it make more sense to use a blocking condition on certain kinds of entities and not others? Why?
In the first example you could end up with blocking conditions on every different kind of entity in the same project at any given time. In the second example you could end up using a blocking condition on a type of entity that just doesn’t work as well or make sense for that kind of entity.
What is best practice? What different approaches are there? And what is the reasoning behind?
I’m also trying to imagine examples why you would block entities that have multiple items in them - like a user story, for example, where it may have many tasks connected with it or an epic that may have many user stories. Does that ever come up (a reason to block something that encompasses other individual items)?
There is no a “best practice” that suits all scenarios. Depending on the client, or the team or even the specific project, you may need to block different entities. The one thing I can say is that any feature you use, like blocking, should be useful. If you have epics, but you use them only as “virtual folders” and you don’t work with them on a daily basis, it won’t be useful to block them.
Cheers!
We are in the process of evaluating Taiga as our preferred tool as we migrate off Pivotal Tracker which is going end of life in April 2025.
It offers a blocking feature that allows you link one story to one or more stories to state that they block progress on a story. This enables cross referencing and linking. Currently I only see Blockers being a free text field ini Taiga and I am wondering if this is a use case for a custom field so we can add links to other Taiga stories so we can then show the blocking in both the blocked sotry and the stories that are blocking it as a means of creating dependency mapping and improve visibility for developers and release managers
In Agile/Scrum, the blocking condition typically applies to user stories or tasks within a sprint. It refers to any issue or condition that prevents progress on a specific item. This condition can apply to:
- User Stories: A user story is blocked if a dependency, issue, or external factor prevents its completion.
- Tasks: A task within a user story can be blocked if one or more prerequisites or conditions are unmet.
