I was actually happy to see your Archived column because we have the same thing and am curious if it’s for similar purpose. Our processes are still pretty new and as a team they’re still being iterated on. I have the task of writing up our norms for it in Asana so figured I’d just take your post as the excuse to write up what we do. I can’t simplify what you have, but maybe give you insight based on how we do it.
We have two different styles of boards. One is our support board where we follow kind of a kanban style methodology and the other is our Projects board where we follow a SCRUM methodology. We are a small team where one person is primarily responsible for support, but we all step in if needed. Then two of us are analysts who work on larger scale projects within the same systems.
The support board looks like this:
New-In: This is where support items are created prior to being prioritized. We also have a help desk system that emails our team, but we hate the tool and users often log tickets that need to be split or handled in ways in which that system can’t support. We have email rules that forward its email to this project and they end up in this column.
Requested: This is where we prioritize support items and apply our basic tags for tracking the type of request (i.e., HelpDesk, Process Improvement, Support Project, etc.)
Follow-Up: This is for items that had previously been worked on but ended up blocked for one reason or another. Once the item is unblocked we move it here. This column gets priority over the “Requested” column’s work because some work has already been done. The column isn’t necessarily needed as it could just be re-prioritized into the “Requested” column, but we liked being able to see what’s been worked on vs what hasn’t been started.
Work-In-Progress: We have basic WIP rules set up for this column. Only 2 items can be in here at a time per team member and the emphasis is that nothing leaves here until it’s either “Done” or “Blocked”. The goal being that things get done, not eternally task-switched on. We have an exception where an item can be moved back to “Follow-Up” in cases where WIP may have inadvertently been filled up with 2 large tasks and something small and pressing comes in. We also store recurring tasks in this column with a Tag designating them as such with the understanding that they’re always at the bottom of the column.
Blocked: We have 3 tags we’ve created that handle the sub-categories we feel exist in this column. The User tag means the task is blocked because we need more info from the user (common with poorly logged tickets). Internal designates tickets where we need something from a different team within our organization and we’re now waiting on that. Vendor tags mean the task isn’t addressable by us and we need to log cases with our vendors to get the item addressed.
Done: Everything we finish over the course of a 2 week cycle goes here. At the end of these periods they’re gathered up and reviewed for trends and potential process improvements. Our support lead meets bi-weekly with our subject matter experts (SMEs) on the accomplishments and will put forth and take any potential ideas for process improvements. Any new work will be prioritized.
Archived: This is where the Done column tasks are moved after they’re reviewed bi-weekly.
Our Projects board is very similar to the Support Board, but is more SCRUM based. It looks like this:
New-In: Tasks are moved here from list projects where we maintain our Epics and Stories. As we do our planning in those list projects, when we feel we have a known quantity of work in a task and it’s ready to go, we add it to the Project Board here. At this point we have story points assigned but there’s no priority or assignment to a team member.
Backlog: This column is for prioritizing the work. We review it during planning meetings and this is what we pull from as we build our team’s sprints. No team member assignments yet.
Sprint: These are the items we’ve identified for working on for our 2-week sprint as a team. We assign the tasks during our planning meeting when we build the sprint. We manage the organization of the work for these items individually in My Tasks. If we want to know what our team members our actually doing or how they plan on organizing their sprint, we check out their My Tasks. As a team we’ve establish norms on how we organize our My Tasks individually so there are standardized sections to use in organizing our work.
Blocked: These are addressed in daily stand ups generally. Things shouldn’t hang out here.
Complete: Items here were completed during the sprint and we have retroactive/review meetings where we look over the tasks here and reflect on it, come up for ideas for improvement, feel good about it, etc. before we go through the team ritual of dragging it all to the Archived column. (Please, multi-select in boards )
Archived: This is where the tasks of past accomplishments go to live out their days.