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Lesson 13: Increment Lifecycle Management

Time: 45 minutes Goal: Master the full increment lifecycle from creation to archival

The Increment Lifecycle​

Every increment goes through a predictable lifecycle:

                    ┌─────────────┐
                    │   BACKLOG   │
                    │  (planned)  │
                    └──────┬──────┘
                           │
            /sw:resume
                           │
                           ▼
┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                                                              │
│    ┌──────────┐    ┌────────────┐    ┌───────────┐          │
│    │ PLANNING │───▶│   ACTIVE   │───▶│  CLOSING  │          │
│    └──────────┘    └─────┬──────┘    └─────┬─────┘          │
│                          │                  │                │
│                          │                  │                │
│                    /sw:pause    /sw:done      │
│                          │                  │                │
│                          ▼                  ▼                │
│                    ┌──────────┐      ┌───────────┐          │
│                    │  PAUSED  │      │ COMPLETED │          │
│                    └──────────┘      └─────┬─────┘          │
│                                            │                │
│                                    /sw:archive       │
│                                            │                │
│                                            ▼                │
│                                     ┌───────────┐           │
│                                     │ ARCHIVED  │           │
│                                     └───────────┘           │
│                                                              │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
                           │
                    /sw:abandon
                           │
                           ▼
                    ┌───────────┐
                    │ ABANDONED │
                    └───────────┘

Status Management Commands​

Viewing Status​

# All increments (active, paused, backlog)
/sw:status

# Output:
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
SPECWEAVE STATUS
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

ACTIVE (2/2 WIP slots used)
  0042-user-authentication   ████████░░  75%  (3 days)
  0043-payment-processing    ██░░░░░░░░  20%  (1 day)

PAUSED (1)
  0040-notification-system   ████░░░░░░  40%  (blocked: external API)

BACKLOG (3)
  0044-analytics-dashboard   📋 Planned for next sprint
  0045-mobile-app           📋 Planned for Q2
  0046-performance-tuning   📋 Tech debt

COMPLETED THIS WEEK (2)
  0041-dashboard-redesign   ✅ 2 days ago
  0039-bug-fix-login       ✅ 5 days ago

Detailed Increment Status​

# Specific increment details
/sw:status 0042

# Output:
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
INCREMENT: 0042-user-authentication
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Status: ACTIVE
Progress: 75% (12/16 tasks)
Started: 2025-11-20
Elapsed: 3 days

USER STORIES:
  US-001: User login            ✅ Complete
  US-002: Password reset        🔄 In progress
  US-003: OAuth integration     📋 Pending

TASKS (recent):
  ✅ T-001: Create AuthService
  ✅ T-002: Implement JWT tokens
  ✅ T-003: Add login endpoint
  🔄 T-004: Password reset flow (current)
  📋 T-005: OAuth Google
  📋 T-006: OAuth GitHub

EXTERNAL SYNC:
  GitHub Issue: #142 (synced 5 min ago)
  JIRA Epic: AUTH-100 (synced 5 min ago)

Pausing and Resuming Increments​

When to Pause​

Pause an increment when:

  • External blocker: Waiting for API access, third-party service
  • Priority shift: Urgent work takes precedence
  • Context needed: Need information from stakeholder
  • Resource constraint: Team member unavailable

Pausing​

/sw:pause 0042

# Optional: Provide reason
/sw:pause 0042 --reason "Waiting for Stripe API credentials"

What happens:

  1. Status changes to PAUSED
  2. WIP slot freed (allows new active increment)
  3. Reason recorded in metadata.json
  4. External tools updated (GitHub label: "on-hold")

Resuming​

/sw:resume 0042

# If WIP limit reached:
# "Cannot resume: 2/2 WIP slots in use. Complete or pause another increment first."

What happens:

  1. Status changes to ACTIVE
  2. WIP slot consumed
  3. Resume timestamp recorded
  4. External tools updated (GitHub label removed)

Backlog Management​

Moving to Backlog​

For increments you've planned but aren't ready to start:

/sw:backlog 0044

# Or during creation:
/sw:increment "Analytics dashboard" --backlog

Backlog vs Paused:

  • Backlog: Never started, planned for future
  • Paused: Was active, temporarily stopped

Prioritizing Backlog​

# View backlog with priorities
/sw:status --backlog

# Output:
BACKLOG (3 items)
  Priority 1: 0044-analytics-dashboard   (Next sprint)
  Priority 2: 0045-mobile-app           (Q2)
  Priority 3: 0046-performance-tuning   (When time permits)

# Reorder backlog
/sw:backlog reorder
# Interactive: Drag and drop priority

Completing Increments​

The Done Command​

/sw:done 0042

What happens:

  1. Task validation: Are all tasks marked complete?
  2. Quality gate: Runs /sw:qa --gate
  3. PM validation: AI reviews against acceptance criteria
  4. Completion report: Generated in increment folder
  5. External sync: Closes GitHub issue, updates JIRA status
  6. Status change: ACTIVE → COMPLETED

If Quality Gate Fails​

/sw:done 0042

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
PM VALIDATION: 0042-user-authentication
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Gate 1: Tasks ❌ (14/16 complete)
  Missing:
  - T-015: Write E2E tests
  - T-016: Update documentation

Gate 2: Tests ⚠️ (85% coverage, target: 90%)

Gate 3: Docs ❌
  Missing:
  - AC-US2-03 not checked off

RESULT: ❌ CANNOT CLOSE

Fix these issues and try again.

Forcing Completion (Use Sparingly)​

# Skip quality gates (hotfix scenario)
/sw:done 0042 --expedite

# Requires confirmation:
# "This will close without validation. Are you sure? (y/N)"

Archiving Completed Increments​

Why Archive?​

Over time, completed increments accumulate:

.specweave/increments/
├── 0001-initial-setup/
├── 0002-user-auth/
├── 0003-dashboard/
...
├── 0089-performance-fix/
├── 0090-security-patch/
└── 0091-current-feature/

# 90+ folders = slow searches, cluttered workspace

Manual Archive​

/sw:archive 0042

What happens:

  1. Moves to .specweave/increments/_archive/0042-user-authentication/
  2. Keeps full history (spec, plan, tasks, completion report)
  3. Updates living docs references
  4. Frees main increments folder

Bulk Archive​

# Archive all completed increments older than 30 days
/sw:archive --completed --older-than 30d

# Archive specific list
/sw:archive 0042 0043 0044

# Preview what would be archived (dry run)
/sw:archive --completed --dry-run

Archive Best Practices​

Recommended schedule:
  Weekly: Archive increments completed > 7 days ago
  Monthly: Archive all completed increments

Automated (via cron or CI):
  /sw:archive --completed --older-than 7d --auto-yes

Restoring Archived Increments​

Need to reference an old increment? Restore it:

# Restore to active folder
/sw:restore 0042

# Just view without restoring
/sw:restore 0042 --view-only

Abandoning Increments​

For increments that won't be completed (requirements changed, feature cancelled):

/sw:abandon 0042

# With reason (recommended)
/sw:abandon 0042 --reason "Feature cancelled by stakeholder"

What happens:

  1. Status changes to ABANDONED
  2. Moved to _archive/abandoned/
  3. Reason recorded for future reference
  4. External tools updated (GitHub issue closed with "won't fix")

Abandoned vs Archived​

  • Archived: Successfully completed, historical reference
  • Abandoned: Not completed, cancelled or obsolete

Workspace Cleanup Commands​

Sync Status​

Fix any status desync between files:

/sw:sync-status

# Output:
Checking status consistency...
  0042: metadata.json says "active", spec.md says "planning"
  → Auto-fixing: Using metadata.json as source of truth

All statuses synced.

Validate Workspace​

Check for issues:

/sw:validate --all

# Output:
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
WORKSPACE VALIDATION
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

✅ 0042-user-authentication: Valid
✅ 0043-payment-processing: Valid
⚠️ 0040-notification-system:
   - Missing plan.md (created spec, never planned)
❌ 0044-analytics-dashboard:
   - tasks.md references non-existent AC-US9-01

Total: 2 valid, 1 warning, 1 error

Fix Duplicates​

If duplicate increments were created:

/sw:fix-duplicates

# Output:
Found duplicates:
  0042-user-authentication (created: Nov 20)
  0042-user-authentication (created: Nov 22)  ← duplicate

Keep the original (Nov 20) and remove duplicate? (Y/n)

The Progress Command​

Track ongoing work:

/sw:progress

# Output for active increment:
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
PROGRESS: 0042-user-authentication
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Overall: ████████████░░░░░░░░  60% (12/20 tasks)

BY USER STORY:
  US-001 (Login):        ████████████████████  100%
  US-002 (Password):     ████████████░░░░░░░░   60%
  US-003 (OAuth):        ░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░    0%

RECENT ACTIVITY:
  ✅ T-008: Password reset email (2 hours ago)
  ✅ T-007: Reset token generation (3 hours ago)

NEXT UP:
  → T-009: Reset confirmation page
  → T-010: Password strength validation

Full Sync Command​

Synchronize everything at once:

/sw:sync-progress

# Output:
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
FULL PROGRESS SYNC
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Step 1: Verify tasks.md
  ✓ 20 tasks validated

Step 2: Update spec.md ACs
  ✓ 8/15 ACs marked complete

Step 3: Sync to living docs
  ✓ FEATURES.md updated
  ✓ FS-001/progress.md updated

Step 4: Sync to external tools
  GitHub: ✓ Issue #142 checkboxes updated
  JIRA: ✓ Epic AUTH-100 progress: 60%

All systems synchronized!

Workflow Command​

Get intelligent guidance on what to do next:

/sw:workflow

# Output:
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
WORKFLOW NAVIGATOR
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Current State: 0042-user-authentication

Phase: IMPLEMENTATION (60% complete)

Recommended Actions:
  1. Continue implementation: /sw:do
  2. Check progress: /sw:progress
  3. Validate quality: /sw:qa 0042

Blockers Detected: None

External Status:
  GitHub: In sync ✓
  JIRA: In sync ✓

Ready for: Continue implementing tasks

Quick Exercise​

Practice lifecycle management:

# 1. Create a test increment
/sw:increment "Test lifecycle feature"

# 2. Check status
/sw:status

# 3. Pause it
/sw:pause 0001 --reason "Testing pause"

# 4. Resume it
/sw:resume 0001

# 5. Move to backlog
/sw:backlog 0001

# 6. Abandon it (cleanup)
/sw:abandon 0001 --reason "Test complete"

Best Practices​

1. Keep WIP Low​

❌ 5 active increments = context switching nightmare
✅ 1-2 active increments = focused, fast delivery

2. Archive Regularly​

# Add to weekly routine:
/sw:archive --completed --older-than 7d

3. Use Backlog for Future Work​

# Don't start what you can't finish
/sw:increment "Future feature" --backlog

4. Always Provide Reasons​

# Good:
/sw:pause 0042 --reason "Waiting for Stripe API keys"
/sw:abandon 0042 --reason "Feature cancelled per PM decision"

# Bad:
/sw:pause 0042  # Why? No one will remember

Key Takeaways​

  1. Increments have clear states: Planning → Active → Completed → Archived
  2. Pause when blocked, not when busy with other work
  3. Archive completed work to keep workspace clean
  4. Abandon obsolete increments rather than leaving them in limbo
  5. Use /sw:workflow for intelligent guidance

Glossary Terms Used​

What's Next?​

Now that you understand the full increment lifecycle, let's dive deep into GitHub integration — the most popular external tool sync.

:next → Lesson 14: GitHub Integration Guide