Items and Jobs

Two kinds of record

The BLOM method keeps what you build apart from the work on it.

• An item is a thing in your product's hierarchy, such as the product itself or one of its capabilities. It holds what the product is and is meant to be, and it lasts.
• A task is a body of work. A Job is the kind of task that changes items. Tasks open and close.

When a Job closes, the items it changed remain, each with the record of that change. So you can always ask an item what changed it, and when. See Hierarchy and How work changes items in the method.

The hierarchy

Every organization in BLOM has the same frame, from the top down:

Organization

Your account, such as Harbor Labs. It holds your people, your PDLC, and your standards, and owns every product no team owns.

Team

Optional. Teams are off until an Administrator turns them on in Settings. Then each product belongs either to the organization or to one team. Teams covers them.

Product

Something you build and keep, such as Member onboarding. It has an owning scope, the organization or a team, and an accountable person.

Capability

A lasting ability of the product, such as Invitations.

Feature

One behavior or experience within a capability, such as inviting a member by email.

Component

A part that supports features, such as the service that sends invitations. It needn't be a screen or a deployable unit.

BLOM starts every organization with these three levels below a product, each under the one before: a capability sits under its product, a feature under a capability, and a component under a feature. An Administrator can rename, add, leave out, or reorder the levels below a product, saying what each means and what it may sit under. BLOM first shows what the change touches, such as the items and numbers that change.

Every item has a number that shows its place. If Member onboarding is 1, Invitations is 1-1, and the first feature under it is 1-1-1. A lower item's owner is a person, a team when teams are on, or no one.

Items keep what lasts

Each item has a page in Product View, with its owner, what created it, its versions, the items under it, and its open work. Product View walks through the page.

An item joins the hierarchy in one of three ways:

• A Job that creates it. The item is added when the Job first needs it: when a claim on the Job names it, or when someone selects Add it now on the Job's page. Its Created by then reads "a Job, when it first needed it".
• A structure edit, for a part that already exists. On an item's page, Add an item under it adds one with your reason. Rename is a structure edit too. To add a whole product, see Add a product.
• An agent's proposal. An agent can propose capabilities and features with blom_propose_items. Nothing is added until an Administrator accepts the list, whole or in part, on the product's Product summary.

Jobs change items

A Job carries one piece of work. Its brief says what the work is for, and names its target items: each item the Job acts on, marked with what it does to it.

• Create adds a new item, by name and level, under a parent you name.
• Change changes an existing item: its intent, its implementation, or both.
• Retire takes an item out of the product. Once nothing active depends on it, the item stays in the hierarchy as retired, shown apart from active items, with its documents and history. A later Job can restore it.

Some Jobs change no item, such as an investigation, and say so. Until anyone knows, a Job's targets read as unknown, never as none. A Job is filed on its targets, so its home follows them.

1. Open the capture form

   In Your queue, select Capture a task.

2. Choose a Job

   For Type, choose Job: changes items. Give it a Title, such as invite-expiry-build.

3. Name its targets

   Under Target items, choose Name the items. Under An existing item it changes, pick 1-1 Invitations and select Add. For a new item, fill in A new item it creates, Under, and Level, then select Add.

4. Capture it

   Select Capture the task. The Job opens in Backlog, owned by you, with its next action blank. Capturing adds no item to the product.

To change the targets later, select Revise the brief on the Job's page. Each change is a new brief revision, and the earlier ones stay in the Job's history. BLOM marks each target Create, Change, or Retire.

Every Job sits in one initiative of its product, the product's default unless you choose another, and can have sub-jobs, three levels deep. See Initiatives and Items to Jobs.

An Administrator can move a task to another product. BLOM first shows what the move touches, such as its owner, who can see it, and the PDLC that covers it, and the task keeps its history.

Reports reach work through a Job

A report records something someone found and assesses it: a Bug, an Issue, Feedback, or a Change request. A report never changes an item. It has no target items and no initiative, and it stays in a phase that takes reports, such as Define. On your PDLC page, those phases are marked Takes reports.

To act on a report, open a Job for the work. For the Bug "Invite link opens twice", Harbor opens the Job invite-expiry-build, which changes Invitations. The Bug keeps its own record and its own assessment, and closing it doesn't claim the fix shipped.

The kinds of task

Every organization starts with five task types. The capture form shows each with what it does.

A report never becomes a Job by changing its type: BLOM won't change a task between the two. A report that needs work gets a Job of its own. See Task types in the method.

Item versions come from releases

A Job never picks a version number. A release makes versions, and BLOM numbers them.

When someone completes a Release step on a Job, with Released to set to Production and an outcome that isn't a failure, BLOM makes a version of each item the Job targets that its merged work reached. A release to another environment, or a failed one, records where it went and makes no version.

• An item's first release makes v1.000. Each later one raises the minor, to v1.001 and on.
• An initiative can declare a new major, which an item takes the first time a release carries that initiative's work.

The item's page lists its versions under Versions, newest first, each with when it was Released, By whom, the Job that released it, and the Jobs it Carried. The newest is marked in Prod. Items to Jobs shows each item's version in Prod and the number its work in progress would bring it to. See Item versions in the method.

Related