Questions from kanman

kanman asks a person only what it cannot find out itself. Its questions for you are pinned in your chat, each asked once, with the options it sees.

kanman works on its own until it needs something only a person has: what you intend, a choice between two good options, or access it does not have. Then it asks. Everything else (what CI says, what the code does, whether a test already failed before a change) it finds out itself.

All of its questions land in one place, so nobody has to watch chat threads, merge request comments and tracker notifications to find out what kanman is waiting for.

Where questions wait

kanman’s open questions for you are pinned at the bottom of the chat, over the message box, one at a time. Personal pins the questions of your teams, each labelled with its team and story, for example platform-ui · PU-301; a team’s chat pins that team’s questions. Over the questions in Personal, a switch between My teams (the default) and All teams shows every team’s open questions to read. 1 of 2 and the arrows step through them, and Answer later puts them aside so you can write a message. See Answer kanman’s questions.

The chip under the message box, which switches between Personal and your teams, shows for each team how many questions wait for you. A push notification about a question opens the message that asked it, and an older link to a question opens the chat that holds it.

What a question looks like

Every question has:

  • a title that says what kanman needs, for example Which CRM sandbox account should the contact sync use for its tests?
  • the story it belongs to and who it is for
  • the reason: what kanman already found out and why it cannot settle this itself
  • the options kanman sees, and room for an answer in your own words

kanman writes “I” in questions. It is one teammate, not a group of bots.

Stories that wait on people

The questions for you are pinned over the message box (2 questions for you) and listed under Waiting on you in For you. Who else a story waits on, and for what, shows on the story’s page. On a story’s page, the story’s log shows an open question with Answer, which opens the pinned question.

Answering

Answer wherever you see the question first: in the chat, from the story’s page or in Slack or Microsoft Teams if your team uses them (Open in kanman there opens the team’s chat). The answer counts everywhere.

A team’s questions go to its members, and its members answer them (viewers never); a question that belongs to no team, every member of the workspace can answer. Not a member? Join the team to answer, or ask a member. kanman never asks you about a team you do not belong to, unless the question names you. See Team members. Answers record who answered, when and where. kanman continues as soon as you answer; it does not wait for its next scheduled look.

Asked once

kanman asks each question once. If the same question is already open, it does not ask again. If you already answered it, kanman uses your answer.

Every question offers I don’t know. Choosing it closes the question for you: the stories it held no longer wait on you, and kanman finds the answer another way or asks someone else on the team. It never asks you the same question again.

kanman never asks you a question of fact (why an API refuses a request, which branch deploys): it finds that out itself. What only a person can know (a release date, who owns an area, what you want), it does ask you, once. Its questions are written in the team chat’s language, the line around them too, and Show in … shows them in yours.

Last updated: January 1, 0001

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