Flow state and Schedule State

[Sheila Olds]

We are creating a few dashboards around flow state and notices some examples in our instance of Rally where the flow state and schedule state were not matching on the story itself to what the team's mapping showed.  I opened support ticket 32784059 for this.  

For example, the team had created a flow state called "In Progress" and mapped it to the "In Progress" Schedule State.  There are close to 100 stories for this one team that shows Flow State = "In Progress", but Schedule State = "Accepted" or "Deployed".  How does this mismatch happen?  

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Senior Manager, Agility Delivery
AIG
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[Sagi Gabay]

Hi Sheila.

To answer your question: "I'm not sure how it can happen. I don't think it should happen". Here are some thoughts I have, perhaps they can help.

- Could it be that you're looking at another team's board where the flowstate <-> schedule state mapping isn't same? Perhaps you're set to a project that's higher than the project for this team? or that your scoping isn't well?
- Could it be that someone from another team changed the state of this story?
- Can you look at Revision History and see if you find both the event where the story entered In-Progress schedule state, but also if you can see another event where the story moved to Accepted or Deployed?
- Do you have any flow states mapped to either Accepted or Deployed?

I suppose one of the questions here is what is the actual Schedule State. The Schedule State is what actually matters to Rally. The flow state is internally to the team where it's set and so I'm wondering if while you're thinking that the stories are In-Progress, perhaps they actually are in Accepted or Deployed, so that's why wondering what the Revision History is saying.

Like said, I don't know why this would happen, but hopefully these questions can lead to find what actually happened, what the state actually is and take it from there.

Let us know if that helped.

Thanks,
Sagi

[Sheila Olds]

- Could it be that you're looking at another team's board where the flowstate <-> schedule state mapping isn't same? Perhaps you're set to a project that's higher than the project for this team? or that your scoping isn't well?  No, all the same team.
- Could it be that someone from another team changed the state of this story? Is this possible?  You'd need access to edit a team in order to move a flow state, correct? 
- Can you look at Revision History and see if you find both the event where the story entered In-Progress schedule state, but also if you can see another event where the story moved to Accepted or Deployed? The flow and schedule states moved on different dates.  I looked at revision history for a few of them and there was no maintenance after 1-1-2020 for the stories.  
- Do you have any flow states mapped to either Accepted or Deployed? Yes, this team has two states mapped to "Accepted" and one to "Deployed"

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Senior Manager, Agility Delivery
AIG
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[David Spalding]

1. User opens User Story directly.
2. Sets Schedule State to "Accepted." 
3. Closes and saves User Story. 

Mystery solved. 


I was presuming that old logic was in place. I wasn't aware that Flow State and Schedule State were now linked (change actions in Edit Details screen) with the "unveiling." I missed that in the announcement. :-}

[Andrea Schilde]

Flowstate and Schedule State are linked when accessed via editor.

A change to flowstate will update schedule state and vice verse. If more than one flowstate is mapped to a schedule state, then the first flowstate in the flow is chosen.

State changes via our editor should not cause any state sync issues. I am curious what support will find when they debug this issue in more detail.

Thanks,

Andrea

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Product Manager
Rally Software
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[Sheila Olds]

Andrea, the examples that I had found were stories and defects that had not been updated for a long long time (some hadn't been touched since 2019).  I guess at that time, it was possible to have a mismatch.

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Senior Manager, Agility Delivery
AIG
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[Andrea Schilde]

@Sheila Olds yes - that would make sense, since we had an issue a while back.
Thanks for letting me know.

Best,

Andrea​

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Product Manager
Rally Software
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[Sagi Gabay]

Indeed, makes sense.  Thanks for clarifying @Sheila Olds

Sagi​