Work items

The individual pieces of work inside a feature.

Work items are the pieces a feature is built from. Iron Octopus splits each feature into work items when it plans it, then builds them one at a time and reviews each one before it counts as done.

What a work item contains

• What to build, as part of the feature’s plan.
• A risk level, which sets how closely Iron Octopus reviews it.
• Review results: anything review sent back, and the attempt it was approved on.

Work items come in a few types, such as building code, infrastructure work, planning, and fixing a bug.

States

State	What it means
Waiting	Planned, not started yet.
Running	Iron Octopus is working on it.
Waiting for review	Built, and being reviewed.
In rework	Review sent it back with issues to fix.
Done	Built, reviewed and approved.
Stuck	It failed or is blocked, even after automatic retries.

Where you see it

• On the feature’s page, as its list of work items.
• As progress on your Home page, such as “3 of 7 work items done · 1 running · 1 in rework”.
• Under Caught in review on Home, when review sent one back.
• Under Needs you on Home, if one is stuck or needs a person to review it.

What you can do

• Open a work item to see what was built and what review found.
• Ask why a work item failed.
• Retry one that’s stuck.