wiki/knowledge/project-management/clickup-status-standardization.md · 486 words · 2026-04-05

ClickUp Status Standardization

Overview

Asymmetric Marketing standardized their ClickUp task statuses across all three primary spaces — Scrum, Client Delivery, and Client Portal — to eliminate reporting confusion caused by inconsistent status sets that had accumulated over time and through workspace migrations. A single canonical status list is now enforced at the space level and inherited by all lists within those spaces.

This decision was driven by a recurring problem: statuses like "Roadblock," "On Hold," "Needs Revision," and "To Do" had crept into various spaces through different creation paths, causing active statuses to appear under the "Done" category and making due-date coloring unreliable.

Canonical Status List

Status	Category	Notes
Backlog	Not Started	Replaces "To Do"
Hold/Blocked	Active	Combines "Roadblock" and "On Hold" into one status
In Progress	Active
Internal Review	Active
Client Review	Active
Done	Done	Triggers the Done → Historical archiving automation
Do Not Use	Closed	ClickUp's native "Closed" status, renamed to discourage use

Key Design Decisions

Hold/Blocked is Active, not Not Started. A blocked task has been started; it belongs in the active category so it doesn't disappear from working views.
"Closed" is renamed "Do Not Use." ClickUp does not allow deletion of its native Closed status. Renaming it signals to the team that it should not be selected manually. Tasks marked Closed are hidden from default views unless "Show Closed" is toggled on.
"Done" is the archiving trigger. Marking a task Done initiates the Make.com automation that adds it to the client folder's Historical list (see ^[1]).
Status parity is required for Agilist/sprint functionality. The Scrum space and Client Delivery space must share identical statuses for sprint views and reporting to work correctly.

Enforcement

The status list is saved as the "Asymmetric Standard Statuses" template at the space level. All lists within the Scrum, Client Delivery, and Client Portal spaces inherit from this template rather than defining their own.

To modify the view layout (e.g., column order), users must:
1. Remove the protected view lock
2. Make changes
3. Re-save as the existing Sprint Template

This prevents individual team members from inadvertently adding columns or statuses that diverge from the standard.

Background: How Inconsistency Occurred

Prior to standardization, statuses varied because:
- Tasks created before vs. after the first workspace migration inherited different space-level defaults
- Some lists had custom status overrides that diverged from the space template
- ClickUp's migration process did not enforce status normalization

The symptom was visible in Sprint 56: tasks with statuses like "Client Review" and "On Hold" were grouped under the Done category, causing their due dates to render green (as if complete) even when overdue.

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