the following proposal is a first step that seems to cover most of the use case expressed by your end users:
#1 Allow multiple type of backlog items
As of today, on a planning configuration you can only select one type of artifacts (e.g. Epics for Releases). A first step would be to allow multiple trackers as backlog type (E.g Epics ans Bugs for Releases).
#2 Allow "child less" elements on Cardwall
By default, if an element has no children (be it a story, a bug or what ever backlog item is) it's displayed in the column according to it's status (should be "To do" most of the time).
As soon as you start adding children to it, the backlog element is displayed in the "swimlane" cell and no longer movable
#3 Relax hierarchy
Baby step to a fully flexible hierarchy.
As of today, when one create a task, the Tracker Hierarchy, mandate it to be a child of a Story (according to the configuration). It means that you will have to select a Story to be attached to or to create a new one.
The proposal is to remove the mandatory step. You will still have the possibility to attach a Task to a Story but that will no longer be enforced by the tool.
This 3 stories covers the following use cases:
- I can schedule a bug in a sprint
- I can manage a "lonley bug" in my cardwall and drag'n drop it
- I can manage a sprint made of stories without children
- I can mix bug, stories with children and stories without children on the same cardwall
It doesn't cover use case like:
- I want to manage stories and sub-stories (within the same tracker)
- I want to break my bug down in tasks
Moreover, there one use case that will require a bit of manual work: "I discover a bug during my sprint, I cannot fix it now and I need to schedule it later on". In this scenario, I will need to:
#1 Remove the link between the story and the bug
#2 Add a cross-reference between from the bug to the story (e.g. a follow-up comment like "This bug was discovered in
story #1234";)
#3 Add the bug as backlog element of the release/sprint (according to people wishes)