Agile - Reporting "dead" tasks

Heather B.

Hello,

I am new to Smartsheet and agile and am looking for best practices. If you plan a task for the sprint and it suddenly is stopped or placed on hold, what is the proper way to record this? Should you simply delete the task from that week's sprint? Perhaps add a status called "Dead/On Hold"? When it's outside of your team's control, how do you account for that?

I appreciate anyone's insight.

Shaine Greenwood

Hi Heather,

I'd recommend trying any means you can to avoid deleting the task entirely. There are a few solutions for this.

• First off, you might consider creating a Status dropdown column in your sheet that tracks the state of the tasks. More on dropdowns here: https://help.smartsheet.com/articles/504619-column-types#dropdown
• Creating a BLOCKED status option for your dropdown helps your team track whether this is a work stoppage issue.
• Using the dependencies functionality can show what tasks are waiting for the "blocked" task to be completed: https://help.smartsheet.com/articles/765727-enabling-dependencies-using-predecessors
• On Hold is a great status if the task is technically not being blocked
• If the task is not blocked, meaning your team can still complete (to the "definition of done") the work they're responsible for OR the task can be completed post project complete/release, you might consider creating an area for Technical Debt or a Backlog. You could drag that task row underneath a "Backlog" parent row. More on hierarchy here: https://help.smartsheet.com/articles/504734-hierarchy-indenting-outdenting-rows
• You might even consider creating a Text/Number "Status Tweets" column (along with your Status column) for your team to type in status updates that are more descriptive.

Ultimately, this all depends on what type of work you're tracking with Agile.