Identifying and mitigating blockers is one of the most important practices in keeping projects on-schedule and maximizing throughput.
I’ve observed three different practices used for JIRA projects in the past to track blocked work:
- Flag – this provides a strong visual indication on the board, but requires the flag be manually added / removed
- Blocked workflow state – clear board visibility (mapped to column), but requires the state be manually entered / exited
- Priority field set to Blocker – clear board visibility (same as for any priority field value, may optionally be swimlane’d), but requires field be manually set to Blocker / back to other priority
The approach I like to use is to rely on the JIRA Blocks / Is-blocked-by link type, to show both blocked and blocking tickets, each in their own swimlane at the top of the board. “Blocking” tickets are important to track when your project is blocking another.
These filters require the popular Adaptavist ScriptRunner plugin be installed on the JIRA server.
Example JQL Filters for Blocked and Blocks
JQL Filters
The intent of the generic JQL filters described here is to support adding “Blocks” and “Blocking” swimlanes to any JIRA project’s board.
AllProj-BlockedDirect: Returns all open tickets having a direct “is blocked by” link to at least one open ticket
issueFunction in linkedIssuesOf(“hasLinks=’blocks’ AND resolution is empty “, “blocks”) AND resolution is empty
AllProj-BlockedIndirectParent: Returns all open tickets having an indirect (parent of blocked sub-task) “is blocked by” link to at least one open ticket
issueFunction in parentsOf(“filter=AllProj-BlockedDirect”) AND resolution is empty
AllProj-BlockedndirectSubtask: Returns all open tickets having an indirect (sub-task of blocked-parent) “is blocked by” link to at least one open ticket
issueFunction in subtasksOf(“filter=AllProj-BlockedDirect”) ) AND resolution is empty
AllProj-BlocksDirect: Returns all open tickets having a direct “blocks” link to at least one open ticket
issueFunction in linkedIssuesOf(“hasLinks=’is blocked by’ AND resolution is empty”, “is blocked by”) AND resolution is empty
Add Blocked and Blocks Swimlanes to board
The following JIRA board swimlanes are defined as:
- Blocks: Show all open project tickets directly blocking open ticket(s) on any other project
- Blocked: Show all open project tickets directly or indirectly (parent-of or sub-task-of) blocked by open ticket(s) on any other open project
Notes
- To run any of the above JIRA filters standalone for a project (outside the board), simply add a “project=” clause and save them to a project-specific filter name
- Be sure to set the saved JQL Filters permissions to “Everyone” or another permission level giving everyone access who needs it
- It sometimes makes sense to omit ‘AllProj-BlockedndirectSubtask’ from the above ‘Blocked’ board filter, to avoid showing too many sub-tasks as blocked
- With Scriptrunner Cloud, it is sometimes necessary to do the following for a change to be picked up by the filter and by the swimlane, for each of the 4 filters:
- Refresh the query in the scriptrunner query editor
- Select “Sync Filter”
- For a Jira board already viewed in a browser: Select “board settings then “back to board”
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