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| Report: Open Issues and Blocked Work Items Trend
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# Description
How many issues are open in the issue log and what has been the trend in open issues throughout the iteration? Unresolved open issues can cause work items to block and consequently schedules to slip. How many work items are currently blocked and what has been the trend in blocked worked items? # Healthy Example This is a healthy example because issues are clearly being closed quickly enough that very few are causing work items to block. Despite a large jump at the beginning of the iteration, which shows good early issue identification, the number of issues falls and remains under control throughout the iteration. # Data Series
Line | Description
--- | ---
Open Issues | A trace of the cumulative open issues during the iteration.
Blocked Work Items | A trace of the cumulative blocked work items during the iteration. Work items become blocked when an issue is not resolved quickly enough. The blocked work item trace will tend to lag the open issue trace. Unresolved issues cause growth in the blocked work item trace. Blocked work items tend to predict a slowdown in velocity toward the end of a project and a gap between active and resolved or closed requirements on the work remaining report. Sometimes issues are not discovered until a work item blocks. Hence, occasional spikes in open issues and blocked work items will coincide without a lag time.
# Unhealthy Examples In this example, all issues are being closed. However, they are not being closed quickly enough and work items are being blocked. The likely effect will show in other reports as reduced velocity and ultimately in slipping delivery dates or reduced functionality complete for the end of the iteration. This is the degenerate worst case example. Issues are rising in an uncontrolled fashion. More and more work items are becoming blocked. Ultimately the whole project grinds to a halt. In this example, things appear to be under control even though issues are not being closed quickly enough. However, there is a latent grouping of issues which lie unresolved and a block of work items which have been blocked for a long period of time and remain blocked throughout the iteration. This effect will manifest itself in a growing gap of unresolved work in the remaining work report and a dropping off in velocity toward the end of the iteration. The full scope of the iteration will not be achieved by the delivery date. |
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