working at Vera
How we track our work?
Main concepts
- Ticket (or Issue): A small task that should take less than a day to complete, if it’s bigger, break it down into smaller tasks.
- Project: A larger piece of work with a clear goal and end date, for example, launching a new feature.
- Initiative: An ongoing focus area that includes multiple projects, for example, improving user onboarding.
- Label: A way to tag tickets with extra context, like which part of the business they relate to.
- Sprint (or Cycle): A one-week block of work where we aim to finish assigned tasks, instead of setting individual due dates, we assign tasks to a sprint.
- Sprint timing: Sprints start every Tuesday, we name each sprint using the week number and year, for example, the first week of 2025 is 01 25.
- Roadmap: we don’t have Roadmaps in linear, these are initiatives that can be configured to show timelines. We have a quarterly initiative that sets the roadmap.
Ticket Statuses
As work progresses, tickets move through different stages:- Triage: The ticket has been raised, but it needs more information, like priority, owner, or sprint, before it can move forward.
- Backlog: The ticket will be worked on in the future, but it’s not yet scheduled into a sprint.
- To Do: The ticket is ready to be started.
- In Progress: You’re actively working on it, and expect to finish it today.
- Blocked: You’re waiting on something before you can continue, add a comment explaining what’s blocking it.
- Awaiting Review (engineering only): A Pull Request has been opened, and the work needs to be reviewed before it can be released
- Testing: The work is ready to be tested to confirm it’s production-ready. Take sure to tag the person you want to review the work.
- Sign Off: The work has been approved, but the assignee may need to take final actions before marking it as done.
- Done: The task is completed and no longer needs attention.
- Cancelled: The ticket will not be worked on, because it’s no longer relevant or is a duplicate.
Must-dos
- If you’re working on something, **it must be in linear. **Not doing this creates duplicate work, confusion and “follow-ups” for clarifications.
- Follow our principle of high-context communication and avoid discussing privately on Slack, discuss on the ticket or link the ticket to the conversation so it syncs to the ticket.
Priority
- Urgent: drop everything and do this ASAP!
- High: your main focus, you should be working on this 90% of the time
- Medium: needs doing, but it can wait until higher priorities are done
- Low: we typically don’t get to work on these.
FAQs
You’ve given feedback on a ticket, do you move it back to To do?
You’ve given feedback on a ticket, do you move it back to To do?
No. If you have actionable feedback, create sub-tickets for it. Those sub-tickets should go to To do.
I have now addressed all sub-tickets after feedback, what should I do?
I have now addressed all sub-tickets after feedback, what should I do?
Move the feedback tickets to testing. Make sure you tag the person who gave you the ticket in:
- the parent ticket (if you’ve completed all the sub-tickets) or
- in the child if you need the sub-ticket to be re-tested before you can do the rest.
I have a feature idea but it’s not crucial right now, where should it go?
I have a feature idea but it’s not crucial right now, where should it go?
If you have enough context to add priority, cycle and assignee, you can add it to Backlog or To do. If not add it to Triage and the relevant person will pick it up.From Triage it should move to Backlog, try to add as much context as possible so it’s easy to get the work done.