Pipeline Stages — From Idea to Ready
Not every idea is ready to be built. The pipeline answers the question: where is this story in the planning process? It's your pre-development funnel — from rough idea to sprint-ready.
What Is the Pipeline?
The pipeline is a separate dimension from status. While status tracks what's happening with a work item right now, the pipeline tracks how far along in planning a story is.
Think of the pipeline as the story's journey before a developer picks it up:
Review → Backlog → Refinement → Estimation → Ready → (Sprint)
Once a story is Ready, it can be assigned to a sprint and development begins.
Tip: Think of pipeline as "where is this in planning?" and status as "what's happening with it right now?" A story can be in Backlog pipeline (planning) and Todo status (development hasn't started). These two fields tell different parts of the story.
Pipeline Stages
1. Review
New items land here for initial triage. This is the inbox — everything gets assessed before being accepted into the backlog.
- Who should be doing this? The product manager or team lead
- What happens here? Quick judgment: is this worth pursuing? Is it clearly defined enough to move forward? Does it duplicate something existing?
- Outcomes: Promoted to Backlog, or Cancelled
2. Backlog
Accepted but not yet refined. The team has agreed this work is worth doing — it just needs more detail before it can be estimated and built.
- Items in Backlog have been triaged and accepted
- They may be missing details, acceptance criteria, design specs, or technical notes
- This is the bulk of most teams' backlog
3. Refinement
This story is actively being worked on to make it buildable. Requirements are being gathered, edge cases are being identified, and the scope is being nailed down.
- Hold refinement sessions here — walk through each story and flesh it out
- Good refinement output: a complete description, clear acceptance criteria, annotated designs attached (Figma URL), known technical challenges documented in the Updates tab
- A story shouldn't leave Refinement until a developer could pick it up and know what to build
4. Estimation
Fully detailed and ready for the team to estimate effort. The team reviews the story together (or async) and assigns estimated hours to the tasks beneath it.
Tip: Run estimation sessions by filtering to pipeline stage "Estimation". Share the screen with the team and walk through each story. Use the parallel design workflow to ensure design is signed off before estimation begins.
- Estimation creates the tasks beneath the story with hour estimates
- This stage often involves the engineer who will build it and the QA engineer who will test it
- Output: tasks created with estimated hours and QA estimated hours set
5. Ready
Fully refined, estimated, and ready to be assigned to a sprint. Ready stories are the inputs to sprint planning.
- Ready stories should be a clean, groomed list
- During sprint planning, pull from this pool based on capacity and priorities
- Moving a story out of Ready into a sprint changes its pipeline stage automatically (or manually based on your board configuration)
6. Completed / Cancelled
Terminal stages. Completed stories have been built and shipped. Cancelled stories were abandoned — kept for context and historical record.
Pipeline vs. Status vs. Stage
It's worth being explicit about how these three fields relate:
| Field | Question it answers | Applies to |
|---|---|---|
| Pipeline | Where is this story in planning? | Stories (R&D boards) |
| Status | What's happening with this item right now? | All levels |
| Stage | Which deployment environment is this task targeting? | Tasks |
These fields are designed to coexist. A complete picture of a task might be: Pipeline = Ready, Status = Code Review, Stage = Predev.
Default Views by Pipeline Stage
Lifecycle includes default views for each pipeline stage so your team can jump straight to the right context:
- Review view — Stories waiting for triage, sorted by created date
- Backlog view — Accepted stories awaiting refinement, sorted by priority
- Refinement view — Stories actively being detailed, sorted by priority
- Estimation view — Stories ready for team estimation
- Ready view — Groomed and sprint-ready stories, sorted by priority
These views are available in the board's left nav under the pipeline section.
Grouping by Pipeline
In any table view, Group by Pipeline to see your full planning funnel at once. You'll immediately spot:
- How many items are in each stage
- Where the bottleneck is (e.g., 40 items in Refinement, 5 in Ready)
- Whether your pipeline is healthy for upcoming sprints
This is a powerful view for sprint planning prep and leadership reporting.
Customizing Pipeline Stages
Pipeline stages can be customized per board. Open your board → click the gear icon → Pipeline tab to:
- Enable or disable stages — remove stages your team doesn't use
- Reorder stages — match your team's actual process flow
- Add custom stages specific to your team's process
- Rename existing stages to match your vocabulary
- Set a stage as the default for new stories
Pipeline is optional — it only applies to stories (top-level items) on R&D boards. If your team tracks planning informally, you can disable the pipeline stages you don't need and work with a simplified set.
Tip: If your team doesn't need an Estimation stage, disable it. If you want a Discovery stage before Review, add one. Lifecycle adapts to your process — not the other way around.
Who Uses the Pipeline
The pipeline is primarily used by:
- Product managers — triaging new ideas, maintaining a healthy ready queue
- Team leads — running refinement and estimation sessions
- Engineering managers — understanding how much runway the team has before the ready queue runs dry
Developers primarily interact with stories once they're Ready and assigned to a sprint — but visibility into the pipeline helps them understand what's coming and contribute to refinement sessions.