Statuses, priority, and stages¶
Every task carries a status and a stage, and can carry an optional priority. They answer different questions, and you set them independently.
- Status — where does this work stand right now? The same seven values everywhere, in every project.
- Priority — how urgent is this? Optional; most tasks leave it unset.
- Stage — what phase of the project does this work belong to? Defined per project, so each team can name its own phases.
Statuses¶
There are seven statuses, fixed across all of TaskTree:
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Backlog | Captured but not yet scheduled. This is what a new task gets by default — work waits here until you pull it onto the board. The dedicated Backlog view lists every backlog task by priority for triage. |
| Not started | Scheduled, but work hasn't begun. |
| In progress | Actively being worked on. |
| Blocked | Can't move forward right now — waiting on something or someone. |
| QA | Built and under review or testing, before it's called done. |
| Complete | Finished. |
| Dropped | Abandoned on purpose before it was finished — the scope changed, or the approach was set aside. The task stays where it is, with its comments and history intact, so the decision is on the record; its title is shown struck through. |
Status drives the colour you see on a task in the list and on the canvas, so the state of the work reads at a glance. You change a task's status from its detail panel, or when you first create it.
Dropping a task
Dropped is for work you decided not to do, as distinct from work you finished. Marking it Dropped rather than deleting it keeps the record — and rather than marking it Complete, it keeps your progress figures honest.
A dropped task doesn't count towards the progress of the section above it: a section with four sub-tasks, two complete and one dropped, reads 2 of 3 complete · 1 dropped. If every sub-task in a section is dropped, the section reads Dropped too.
If the task you're dropping has sub-tasks still open, TaskTree asks whether to drop those as well — naming them first, so you can see what would go. Sub-tasks that are already Complete are always left alone. Each task is dropped separately, so Ctrl+Z steps back through them one at a time.
Like Backlog, Dropped tasks don't appear on the Kanban board — the board shows work that's in flight. They stay in the list view, where you can filter on the status as usual. A dropped task is never shown as overdue, whatever its due date.
Backlog and the board
The Kanban board shows your active work: Not started · In progress · QA · Blocked · Complete. Backlog and Dropped tasks don't appear on the board — because new tasks start in the backlog, you bring a task onto the board by moving it out of Backlog (from the list view, the dedicated Backlog view, or the task's detail panel). The backlog is the parking lot you groom — priority-sorted in the Backlog view; the board is what's in flight.
Priority¶
Priority is an optional triage signal — Low, Medium, or High — that you can set on any task. By default a task has no priority; set one when you want it to stand out. When set, a small coloured priority pill appears on the task across the list, board, canvas, and timeline, and you can filter the list by priority (including "No priority" to find untriaged tasks). Set or clear it from the task's detail panel, or inline in the list's Priority column.
Stages¶
Stages describe your project's lifecycle — the phases work moves through from idea to finished product. Unlike statuses, stages are set per project, so they fit whatever process your team follows.
A new project starts with a default set aimed at engineering R&D work:
- Concept
- Prototype
- Validation
- Low-Volume Batch
- Commercialisation
Every task is tagged with one of its project's stages (a new task defaults to the first one).
Changing the stages¶
A project admin can rename, reorder, add, or remove stages in the project's settings. The stage list is shared by everyone on the project, so a change applies to all of its tasks.
Note
Because each task's stage has to be one of the project's defined stages, plan a rename so tasks aren't left pointing at a stage that no longer exists.
Status vs stage, side by side¶
A task in the Validation stage might be In progress today, Blocked tomorrow, and Complete next week — its stage stays "Validation" the whole time, while its status tracks the day-to-day state of the work.