Story not appearing in agile board when defect/task/incident is converted to Story.

[Shyna1]

Hello,

In the agile board , the backlog tab contains a triage board where all the tasks/incidents/requests count is displayed .

When we go ahead to open any task/defect/incident , click on 'Add to Backlog' , the defect/task/incident is added to the backlog  and a story is created parallely . But the story doesn't add to the backlog , only its  respective defect/task/incident is added and when the task/defect/incident is clicked from the backlog view , it opens a window with two tabs one is the defect/task/incident info and another tab contains the story . 

Also if the defect/incident/task is closed , that disappears from the backlog view (which to some extent is valid as the filter is to have only the active records).

Is there a way we can change, the agile board in such way that when 'Add to Backlog' is clicked , it should add the story too along with the defect/incident/task , and when the defect is closed the story created out of it still remains in the backlog view .

Any leads on this is highly appreciated!!

[Namita Mishra]

Hi @Shyna1 ,

Thanks for posting this query.

Before I answer the question, would like to remind the use case / pain point that existed before triage board was introduced.

USE CASE:

Typically all the product teams work on planned as well as unplanned work. Planned work refers to the prioritized stories added to the sprint backlog and by unplanned work I mean the incidents / problems / defects etc that were not planned during the sprint planning but came up after sprint has started. 

PAIN POINT:

When unplanned work occurs, it takes precedence and results in the spill over of planned work.

To track this planned & unplanned work, scrum master / product owner had to switch between two separate applications (for example ITSM for unplanned work & Agile 2.0 for planned work) . This was required becasue in EoS demos, scrum master had to explain why deadlines were not met.

ROLE OF TRIAGE BOARD:

With the introduction of triage board, now team can have a centralised view of unplanned as well as planned work. 

Backlog Tab: In the backlog tab we still show as defect / incident / problem (& NOT story) because it helps in clearly identifying the unplanned as well as planned work added to the team's backlog and taking a decision what should be prioritised for current / future sprint.

Sprint Planning Tab: In this tab as well it is shown as unplanned work and team gets a clear view how many unplanned items are they planning for that sprint. It also helps to identify the total points / effort, the team has spent on unplanned (operational) work in that sprint. 

Sprint Tracking Tab: Please note that only on the Sprint Tracking / Board view, the records of a triage board are represented by stories. The reason is once the planning is completed, team works on stories and updates the stories in terms of points / comments / state etc.

IMPORTANT POINT TO NOTE:

From sprint tracking -> story board, when scrum team member, moves a story (for unplanned work), to another lane (lane = vertical columns. Note: vertical columns by default represent the state of the story), the state of the story changes, however the state of the original triaged record remains the same.

In order to change the state of the original record, open the record in the form and use the 'Open original record' related link.

If the response helped in answering the reason why the story is not shown in the backlog tab, please mark it as correct / helpful.

Thank You!!

Namita Mishra

 

[Bradley Ross]

We have two ways to create a story from an incident in our instance.

The first option is to use the triage board as you've already described. This creates the "twin" story record that shows alongside the original task record. As Namita noted, closing the story doesn't automatically close the original task. We added some custom logic in our instance to close the original task if possible. If the original task can't be closed because additional fields have to be filled out, we pop up an info message if you try to close the story without first closing the original task. For us, this is usually with incidents. 

The second options we added for our users is a custom action on the incident record to create a story. This is for the scenario when we can close an incident with a workaround but we want to get a story in our backlog to improve things in the long term. When we create the story in this fashion, we don't associated the two records together in a way that would "twin" them like the triage board. 

I don't know of a way to accomplish what you're asking, which is to have both the original task and the twin story to show on the sprint tracking board. I think this is a change ServiceNow would have to make.