Using agile workflows for fun & profit

Summary: An agile workflow is a series of stages agile teams use to develop an application, from ideation to completion.

Every software team has a process they use to complete work. Normalizing that process–i.e., establishing it as a workflow–makes it clearly structured and repeatable, which, in turn, makes it scalable. At Atlassian, we take an iterative approach to workflow management because it helps us meet our goals faster and exemplifies our team culture. We are experts in agile workflow management (if we do say so ourselves), and we want to help you become experts too.

When implementing a workflow for the team, always start simple. Fight the temptation to spend weeks (over-)engineering it. Overly complex workflows are hard to understand and adopt–not to mention adapt. For software teams, we recommend these basic workflow states:

In an issue tracker, these statuses flow from one to the next using transitions that structure the workflow. 

Some software teams include additional states in their workflow that help them track the status of work more precisely.

Each state in the workflow doesn't need to be handled by a different person. As an agile team matures, developers handle more and more of the work–from design all the way through to delivery. An autonomous team that can handle heterogeneous work is one of the hallmarks of agility, after all.

Discuss each pain point in the team's retrospective, and keep in mind that each team will have slightly different values based on their project, technology stack, and method in which they like to work. That's why it's important to choose an issue tracker that has a flexible workflow configuration. Far to many teams compromise their work style to fit a particular toolset, which is frustrating for everyone. This can lead team members to avoid using that tool altogether, compounding frustration across the team and generally wreaking havoc. And when morale falls, productivity suffers. That's a double whammy we all want to avoid!  

Teams that are new to agile or that don't have cross-functional skills often end up with "mini waterfalls" in their workflow. For example, design kicks off a work item with a mockup. Development does the implementation. Test confirms quality. Each state is blocked until the former state is complete. Sound familiar? That's waterfall. But we can do much better with agile workflows to unblock the team and make development easier. 

When you're comfortable with the basic workflow and are ready to transition to an agile process flow, create statuses for each type of work in a team's process. Ideation, design, development, code review, and test are functionally different and can be individual statuses. Aim for a lean set of statuses that clearly communicate what phase a piece of work is in.

Project statuses can also be shared with the rest of the organization. When building an agile process flow, think about what metrics are important to report on and what non-team members might be interested in learning. For example, a well designed workflow answers the following questions:

• What work has the team completed?
• Is the backlog of work increasing or keeping pace with the team?
• How many items are in each status?
• Are there any bottlenecks that are slowing the team down?
• How long does it take to complete an average task?
• How many work items didn't pass our quality standards the first time around?

The next step in optimizing the workflow is to ensure a steady stream of work through the workflow. Work in progress (WIP) limits dictate a minimum and maximum number of issues in a particular state of the workflow, ensuring each state has enough work to keep the team fully utilized, but not so much that it loses focus from juggling priorities. Enforcing WIP limits will quickly show which processes slows overall work through the pipeline. As the team learns to optimize around its WIP limits, throughput will increase. (See the article on WIP limits for more details.) 

Organizations that have several agile teams face special challenges with workflows. Teams often want to optimize their own workflow to reflect their unique process and culture. This is perfectly understandable. But it can create headaches when different teams use different processes while working on the same project.

Agile teams that work together can benefit from sharing the same workflow. Using the same workflow can make transitioning work between agile teams easier, because they use the same conventions for defining and delivering work. Creating a common process usually involves some give and take from both teams. That's good! They'll learn from one another and come out with a better workflow in the end. 

No matter what your workflow looks like, the process of developing it should be agile, too. Discuss it in retrospectives from time to time, and adapt it as the team's culture and composition changes.