Task stages are the steps work passes through, and they are the heart of how the Project app fits a team. This piece is about designing task stages for your team in Odoo.
What task stages are
Task stages are the steps a task moves through, from being new to being done. In the Project app, a task sits in a stage and moves along the stages as the work progresses. The stages are, in effect, the workflow of the team's work: the sequence of steps that work goes through. Because tasks are managed by their stages, the stages are the backbone of how a team's work is organised and seen in the Project app.
Why the stages must match how the team works
Because the stages are the backbone, they have to reflect how the team genuinely works. A team has a real way of working, a real sequence its work passes through, and the task stages should be that real sequence. If the stages match the team's genuine workflow, then a task's stage means something real, moving a task along means something real, and the Project app is a true picture of where work stands. If the stages are generic, or borrowed, or do not reflect the real workflow, the stages fit the work poorly, tasks do not really map to them, and the team works around the app rather than with it. Designing stages that match how the team genuinely works is what makes the Project app fit the team.
How to design the stages
Designing task stages starts not with the software but with the team's genuine workflow. The team should articulate, honestly, how its work genuinely flows: what are the real steps a piece of work passes through, from being new to being done. Those real steps are what the stages should be. The design work is to capture the genuine workflow as a set of task stages, so each stage corresponds to a real, recognisable point in how the team works. The Project app's task stages are configurable, so once the genuine stages are identified, they can be set up.
Clear and meaningful stages
A few principles for good task stages. Each stage should be a clear, recognisable point in the team's workflow, so it is unambiguous which stage a task is in. The stages should be the genuine steps, not so many that the workflow is split into more stages than are real, which makes it fiddly, and not so few that real distinct steps are collapsed, which loses useful detail. The aim is a set of stages that genuinely and clearly reflects how the team works, neither over-elaborated nor over-simplified.
Different teams, different stages
An honest point. Different teams genuinely work differently, and so different teams may need different task stages. The stages that match one team's workflow may not match another's. Designing task stages for your team means designing for that team's genuine workflow, not imposing one set of stages on every team regardless. Where a business has teams that genuinely work differently, the task stages can reflect that.
The takeaway
Designing task stages for your team in Odoo means making the stages reflect how the team genuinely works. The stages are the backbone of the Project app, the workflow of the work, so they must correspond to the real steps the team's work passes through. Design them by articulating the team's genuine workflow and capturing it as clear, meaningful stages, neither over-elaborated nor over-simplified. Different teams may genuinely need different stages. Task stages that match the team's reality are what make the Project app genuinely fit. For how we approach Odoo, see our ERP practice.