Fewer or more issue types?

[Karol Kleibl]

we need to implement a classification of jira worklogs for reporting.

some example reports may be:

* distinguish between billable and not billable hours,

* hours spent according to activities (analysis, development, testing, ...),

* hours spent on bugs reported by customers vs. found internally

* hours covered by a contract (internal hours, covered by contract, not covered but paid, covered and unpaid)

* etc.

that's why we need to classify the worklogs in more dimensions.

for the activities (analysis, design, implementation, testing, ...) we plan to use attributes (tempo work attribute or issue custom field).

for the other reports we need to distinguish whether the work is paid by the customer or is internal. we have come with 2 solutions:

1. distinguish the type of work by the issue type (e.g. Bug/Incident is internal cost, support activities are paid, work on change requests is paid, ...), which implies to have multiple issue types (> 10) in every project

2. distinguish the type of work by custom field attributes in combination with issue type

we're not in agreement which one would be better for us, so i'd like to hear your opinions and arguments on what solution you'd prefer or which approach did you choose for similar use case.

thank you

karol

[Tracy Walton]

Hi Karol, 

As I think about this I end up with more questions than suggestions. How do you determine (regardless of the tool) if work is paid for by a customer or internal? Also, what is the difference between billable and non-billable and the customer pays or its paid internally? 

From what you described, a separate issue type would not likely be the ideal solution. Although it is one way to make a distinction for a type of work, issue types are usually ALSO distinct in their workflow, screens, fields etc. Is it also true that who pays for the work also determines the workflow the team uses to accomplish the work? 

I'm guessing a lot may have changed since you wrote this post, but I'm curious how it turned out for you?

Tracy