How to exclude "on hold" issues from WIP limits

[Tim Franken]

We work with a Kanban flow and make use of WIP limits for the different stages of our development cycle. Sometimes, an issue is depending on an internal person who's not available or an external party we have to wait for. This issue is then blocked and we set the "On hold" field to "yes".

At this point, the issue should not be worked on and thus should not be counted to the WIP limits set for the different columns. I'm not sure it's possible at this stage to do so. Is there a workaround for this?

[Dobroslawa Wierzbicka]

As of now, you can only exclude sub-tasks from the WIP limit, but no other specific Issue Types. As a workaround, you may create a separate column for Issues that are On Hold, to visualize the fact that they're waiting for the next stage.

You'll probably be interested in this feature request: GHS-3681; it would allow you to create an On Hold swimlane with it's own WIP limit.

[Tim Franken]

The first workaround isn't really an option since we already have quite some columns (Ready for Analysis, Analysis, Ready for Design, Design, Ready for Implementation, Implementation, Ready for Testing, Testing, Ready for Release). If we would have to add an "on hold" column for every current column that would mean an overkill of columns.

We currently use the option to give a color to a ticket by a JQL query so they're already visualized. So I just like to not count them in the WIP.

What also would help is not showing a red column when there are on hold tickets in there.

The second solution isn't great either because that would mean on hold tickets are moved to another swimlane and thus might be overlooked. I'd like them to stay in the main swimlane so everyone notices them and they're not forgotten.