workitem

Workitem is a unit of work tracked within a workflow or project management system. It represents a discrete piece of work that must be completed, such as a task, defect, feature, or requirement. The concept is used across agile development, IT service management, and business process tooling, and it serves as the fundamental artifact for planning, tracking, and reporting work.

An instance of a workitem is typically stored with a set of attributes: a unique identifier, a title, a description, a type or category, a current state or status, priority, assignee, estimates or effort, remaining work, created and updated timestamps, and related fields such as area, module, or iteration. Many systems also support links to related items, blockers, dependencies, or parent-child relationships, and may include links to code changes, test cases, or documentation for traceability.

Workitems follow a lifecycle defined by the project or tool, usually including creation, assignment, progress updates, state transitions, and closure. Common states include New/Open, In Progress, Resolved/Done, and Closed, though the exact model varies by organization and software. Transitions are often governed by permissions and automation rules, and historical audit data is maintained to support reporting and compliance.

In practice, workitems enable planning, workload management, and reporting. They support agile practices such as backlogs, sprints, and burndown charts, and they can be integrated with development workflows, continuous integration, and monitoring systems. Type definitions and consistent field usage help ensure comparability across teams and projects.

Best practices include defining a stable set of workitem types, standardizing state models, avoiding unnecessary fields, and using tags and links to improve searchability and traceability. Proper governance and documentation help maintain a usable backlog and accurate project metrics.