(The third in a series of blog posts on how you can make use of the status indicators on cards, in Task Boards and Scrum Boards.)
In our last post we talked about how to use the “Needs review” flag; today, let’s take a look at “Needs rework”.
In an ideal world, cards would only move from left to right: starting off on the left-most column, e.g. the Backlog in a Scrum Board, and moving in stages to the Done column.
In the real world, however, work can sometimes need rework, and that’s what the “Needs rework” status indicator can be used for.
The amount of rework that’s needed will vary widely, depending upon the project and the team:
If someone new has just joined a well-established team, that person may need some time to understand exactly what’s expected of them at each stage of the project’s workflow: they may, for example, be too quick to move a card from “Planning” to “In Development”, without realizing what’s expected of a card that’s fit to exit the Planning stage.
This new person may find that her work gets pushed back to the left, marked as “Needs rework”.
It’s imperative that whoever pushes back work as “Needs rework” also provides some precise description of what rework is needed.
This is most often done using chat, but sometimes a marked up document, screenshot or other materials may be more useful, particularly if the task is complex.
But, simply marking a card as “Needs rework”, without providing a good explanation, is never a good idea: it will generate ill-will within the team, discourage the new person, and simply result in more work for everyone.
Some times of work will always require a lot of rework: e.g. design.
Mockups of new products or features, or copy for new advertising, will go through a lot of rework before it is considered ready to move along a workflow.
This is quite normal, which brings up another critical point: good Project Leaders will ensure that there is no stigma attached to cards being marked as “Needs rework”.
If people are made to feel, however subtly, that their work is of poor quality because many of their cards are frequently marked as “Needs rework”, this will have a very bad effect on individual and team morale.
It’s really incumbent on the Project Leaders to ensure that people understand that “Needs rework” is simply a status indicator, not a judgment of someone’s abilities!
All posts in this series:
- “Ready to Pull”
- “Needs review”
- “Needs rework”
- “On hold”
- “Is blocked”
- “Done”