How to block a card
If you cannot continue working on a task for any reason, e.g. a staff member is sick or a customer is not picking up the phone, indicate this by blocking the card.
This way you and your colleagues can see why the card is not moving on.
In this article you will learn:
How to block a card;
What is a blocking card and how to create one;
How to unblock a card;
How to analyze blocked tasks and fix similar problems in the future.
How to block a card
Open the card and click on the button with an exclamation mark.
You can enter the reason for blocking. Click "Bock".
A red box will appear on the front of the card and everyone on the board will see that there is a problem that prevents the card from moving forward.
What is a blocking card and how to create one
In addition to the reason for blocking, you may choose or create a blocker card. That is another task, without solving it, you will not be able to finish working on the blocked card.
Switch on blocking → click "Add blocking card" → select the blocking card from the list or create a new one:
The blocked card will show a link to the blocker card:
And the front of both cards will show the blocking information:
Important! When the blocker card is done, i.e. moved to the "Done" column type, the blocking will be removed from the blocked card.
How to unblock the card
Open the card and press the "Unblock" button.
You can also block/unblock the card in Slack. You can learn more about how to set up integration and use blocking here.
Block resolution time report
If it is important for you to understand why tasks get blocked and keep such cases to a minimum, we recommend analyzing blockings.
There is a special chart Block resolution time in FlowFast for this purpose.
You can see the times and causes of blockages on a graph, and you can also download a detailed report in table format.
How to analyze task blocking in FlowFast
It's needed to introduce an explicit rule in the team that causes a blocking to be set in FlowFast.
The blocking is performed using the "Block" button and a blocking context is entered. The context must be entered in a way that the whole team can understand. Not just "WAIT", but a specific reason. This is very important.
Then there is a period of time after which data on blockings should be collected. For example, once a month. This is done in the "Block resolution time chart" in FlowFast.
Then it's needed need to look at what type of blockages occurred, in what ratio, and at what stage. You can then see why tasks are blocked most often. You can then figure out what to do about it.
Once the changes have been made, the most important thing is to gather the data on this particular blocking cluster again next month, and figure out whether the changes work or not.