Track is the mainline

Shipping one change touches many records: a ticket, a todo in an iteration, a branch and a pull request, pipelines, a test run, a delivery and its tag. In a usual setup they live in four or five tools, and someone keeps the tracker in step with the code by hand. Acahti keeps all of them in one instance, so it can join them into one line per piece of work: Track.

Flows and stages#

A flow is one piece of work followed through. Tickets, todos, iterations, deliveries and failing Argos cases each have one. Every flow runs along the same eight stages, in this order:

1. ReportedTicket
2. PlannedTodo, iteration, documents
3. In progressTodo status
4. ReviewPull request
5. BuildPipeline
6. ArgosArgos run
7. DeliveredDelivery, tag pipeline
8. ReleasedRelease, verified ticket

A flow shows the stages its type expects (a bug, a feature, a todo, ops work, an Argos case, an iteration) and any other stage it has evidence for. Work managers adjust a type's template, or one flow where reality differs. The stages and templates are listed in Track.

Evidence moves the flow#

A stage is reached when a record for it appears. Each stage is done, current, upcoming, failed or skipped, and an unfinished flow reports how long it has been stuck. Nobody keeps a status field in step with the code:

• Name the work and it links itself. A pull request whose title, body or branch names todo#123, ticket#45, todo/123 or T-123, and a pipeline whose commit, branch or pull request does, join that flow under Review and Build. A delivery's tag pipelines show under Delivered.
• Agents link as they work. The skill has agents name the todo in the branch and commit; planning_todo_links attaches a pull request, pipeline or Argos run by hand.
• Tests report back. A pipeline step running argos run … --dash streams its run to the instance, and a failing case opens its own flow, from the first failure to green again.

Everything hangs off the line#

Because Track reads the same records the rest of the app writes, every tab is a view of some part of it:

Read it three ways#

• One item. Every todo and ticket page has a Track card: the stage rail, and a timeline of when each stage was reached, by whom, and the records behind it.
• Every open flow. Track in the header lists open work by project, with each flow's stages, its current stage and how long it has been stuck.
• One person. The People view shows what a person (or an agent) moved over the last 7, 14 or 30 days: work, commits, pull requests, reviews and pipelines.

Agents read the same thing: track_get returns one flow, track_list the open ones and track_activity one person's. See Track for every view, filter and operation.