In this article:
1. What Are Exit Criteria?
2. How to Create Exit Criteria for Your Board?
3. Who Can Mark Exit Criteria as Completed?
4. How to Add a Comment to an Exit Criterion?
5. Exit Criteria in Use
6. Exit Criteria in the Closed Card View
In Businessmap, exit criteria help to ensure your process flows smoothly and aligns with your guidelines. Here is a simple guide on how to set up and use exit criteria effectively.
1. What Are Exit Criteria?
Exit criteria are requirements you set for a particular column, so cards can only progress to the next stage (column) if those requirements are met. Users with appropriate permissions can configure these conditions for each column on a board.
By implementing exit criteria on your board, everyone working on it will have a better idea of where each card is in the process and what more needs to be done to move it forward.
Important: Exit criteria prevent cards only from moving right on the board (forward in the board process) and do not affect moving cards to the left on the board (backward in the board process).
A typical example is to require approval from multiple people to proceed with a purchasing request. This is what the exit criteria can look like on a card:
2. How to Create Exit Criteria for Your Board?
Navigate to the “Edit Workflows” button in the upper left corner of your board to open the board configuration menu.
Important: To set exit criteria on a given board, you need to have the "Edit Workflow" privilege. Alternatively, must be a Workspace Manager for the corresponding workspace or an Account Owner.
To add an exit criteria to a column, navigate to the gear icon in the desired location and open it. Scroll down to the exit criteria menu. From there you can add the name of the exit criteria that describes the requirements you want to add (e.g. the PM must review the card before it is moved to Done). When finished, click on the Add button to save it. To edit the exit criterion or add/change the users who are allowed to mark it as complete, click the three dots next to each criterion.
You can also reorder and delete the exit criteria.
Note: You can also create and edit exit criteria from the Board policies menu available in the sidebar. You can learn more in the dedicated article on board policies.
3. Who Can Mark Exit Criteria as Completed?
By default, any user with the “Edit Card Details” permission on the board (where Exit Criteria is configured) can mark a criterion as completed.
This can also be restricted to specific users on the board. To do so, click to edit the criterion and select the users who will be able to check out the criterion.
4. How to Add a Comment to an Exit Criterion?
To leave a comment on an exit criterion, open the respective card, and click the message icon next to the criterion. This will open a separate window to add a comment and mark the exit criterion as complete.
Once you save the changes, the comment will be visualized on hover over the message icon.
To remove the comment, click the message icon and delete it.
Important: If you uncheck the criterion after leaving a comment, the comment will be automatically deleted.
5. Exit Criteria in Use
If you try to move a card with an unchecked exit criterion, the system will display an error message.
Important: If a card is linked as a child to an initiative, and the initiative is located in a column that has exit criteria configured, moving the child card in a way that would cause the initiative to move out of its column will be stopped as the initiative's criteria would also need to be completed.
6. Exit Criteria in the Closed Card View
You can customize how exit criteria are displayed in the closed view, both for cards and initiatives workflows. To do that, click the Configure views icon in the board sidebar. You have the same visualization options for cards and initiatives:
- Icon — exit criteria will be displayed as an icon with information on how many criteria have been marked versus the total number of criteria (e.g. 1/2).
- Row (all) — all exit criteria will be visualized in separate rows, both checked and unchecked.
- Row (unchecked only) — only unchecked criteria will be displayed. Once you mark a criterion as checked, it will be hidden from the closed view.
- Off — exit criteria will not be visualized in the closed card view.