Warnings

Warnings and signals

The application flags work worth looking at without storing a warning anywhere. Every signal is derived from state the board already keeps — a card's blocked flag, its placement and arrival stamp, the dependency links, the people and priorities, the rollup and the target dates — so a badge cannot disagree with the work it describes, and nothing has to be cleared by hand.

Two tones carry the difference:

• Risk — red. A hard stop somebody else can see: blocked work, or work that waits on something not done.
• Watch — amber. Something to look at: nothing moving, nobody owning it, a date that has passed.

Two thresholds recur: 7 days for age and staleness (STALE_AFTER_DAYS), and a lane's own WIP limit. An initiative with nothing below it raises nothing: having no work yet is a state, not a finding.

On a card

What you see	What it means	What clears it
Blocked, a full-width red band with the reason	A person marked the card stopped for something that is not another card. It is the loudest fact on the card.	Unblock in the card's panel, which records the change in its history.
N blocked, a red pill on an initiative card	N cards below are explicitly blocked and still open. On a programme or portfolio board the same count is amber and says N blocked below, so a blockage several levels down does not shout at a reader who cannot act on it.	The cards below are unblocked or finished.
N depend on it, an amber shield	N unresolved items depend on this one; if it slips, they are blocked. It is not shown once this item is done — the dependency is satisfied.	The dependents finish, or the links are removed.
Waiting on, one or more named chips	The card is waiting on work outside this board — the boundary workflow. Each chip names it and takes you to the other end.	The external work reaches Done, or the boundary link is removed.
Nd in lane, a grey clock	The card has been in its current committed lane (Not Started or In Progress) for at least 7 days. Backlog is uncommitted inventory and rests; Done is finished, so neither is aged. It is not the same as Stale (see below), which only counts committed work.	The card moves to another lane.

A Done card keeps its history but not its warnings: a finished item has no action left, so the age cue, a blocked band, a dependents shield and a boundary chip are not drawn on its face. The same applies to a completed initiative's health flags and warnings.

A card's own dependency on another card is a derived state, not a badge on its face: it is read in the card's Dependencies section and it clears when the card it waits on reaches Done. An initiative above it does report that wait — as N waiting.

Unassigned and No priority are not drawn on the card itself; they are dashboard signals, below.

On an initiative

Health is shown on the initiative's card in the initiatives flow, in its panel, and in the dashboard's Health column. The level is one of:

Level	Meaning
At risk	At least one risk flag is raised.
Watch	Only watch flags are raised.
On track	No rule found anything to say.

The flags themselves:

Flag	Tone	What it means	What clears it
N blocked	risk	N cards below are explicitly blocked and still open.	They are unblocked or finished.
N waiting	risk	N cards below wait on work that is not done.	The work they wait on is done, or the links are removed.
still Nd	watch	The initiative is committed (Not Started or In Progress) and nothing below it has moved for at least 7 days. It is only raised when the work carries an arrival stamp; an unknown last movement is not called movement.	Something below moves.
N unowned	watch	N committed cards below have no assignee.	Each gets an owner, or leaves the committed stages.
N backlog	watch	The initiative is committed, but N of its leaves are still in Backlog. The work below is not all committed with it.	Those cards leave Backlog, or the initiative returns to Backlog.
N due later	watch	N cards below have a target end date after the initiative's own target end date.	The dates are brought into line, or the cards finish.

N depend on it also appears on an initiative — the same dependents warning a card gets — but it is not a health rule: it is a fact about the item rather than about the work below it.

In the item panel, an initiative's warnings are collected under a single N warnings heading. A chip opens the cards its rule found, where it found particular ones, so a warning leads to the work rather than only describing it.

On the dashboard

The Needs attention band reads the population the board actually renders: cards on a team board, initiatives on a programme or a portfolio. Its tiles are counts, and its table lists the items behind them:

Signal	Tone	What it means	What clears it
Unfinished	—	Every unfinished item on the board. This is the population the other counts are taken from, not a warning.	The item is done or archived.
Overdue	risk	Its target end date has passed and it is not done.	It is done, or the date is moved.
Stale	watch	On a card: it has sat in Not Started or In Progress for at least 7 days. On an initiative: the health rule still Nd above. A card in Backlog can show an age badge but is not called stale.	It moves.
Unassigned	watch	On a card: nobody is assigned. On an initiative: the health rule N unowned — committed cards below have no owner — spoken of as unassigned rows.	Assign somebody, or the work leaves the committed stages.
No priority	watch	The item has no priority set.	A priority is chosen.

The dashboard's initiatives table also shows the Health column with each flag, and an overdue target date is written in red with the word overdue underneath it.

On a portfolio board

The strategy map and the objectives view add warnings about coverage, not flow:

What you see	What it means	What clears it
No initiative is mapped to this objective, an amber line on an objective card	The objective has no work mapped to it. It has no completeness figure either, because there is no work to read.	Map a top-level initiative to the objective.
N gaps in amber in the strategy map's header	The number of objectives with nothing serving them plus top-level initiatives in the portfolio's remit serving no objective.	Either gap is closed.
No objective yet, an amber group on the strategy map	Strategic initiatives on the portfolio that no objective carries. They are shown as a flow of their own, waiting to be mapped.	Map each to an objective.
over the commitment limit, a red badge in the objectives header	The period holds more than five objectives. The limit is a commitment, not a capacity: the view warns, it does not block.	Move an objective to another period or remove one.

Mapping is attribution, never WIP. Moving an initiative from one objective to another changes which objective it serves; it does not move a card or raise a limit.

On a lane

What you see	What it means	What clears it
N/limit in amber, with an alert icon	The lane is at its WIP limit.	Cards leave the lane.
N/limit in red, with an alert icon	The lane is over its WIP limit.	Cards leave the lane.
A move that does not happen, or asks for a reason	The board's WIP enforcement is doing its job: justify holds the move until a reason is given (the reason is recorded on the card), and block refuses it. Visualize only tints the lane and lets the move through.	The move is completed with a reason, or the card is placed elsewhere.

The count is the column's own, not the filtered view's: narrowing what you see never changes the load a column carries.

What is not a warning

• The Blocked and Due soon options in the filter panel are ways to narrow the board, not badges of their own.
• A finished item's archived or discarded outcome is a fact about where it went, not a warning.

Related

• Reading a board — the columns, pips, rollups, multiple flows and the boundary.
• Board types — team, programme and portfolio boards.