Can I track progress toward milestones in a single release?

[Jim Constant]

My team is working on the 1.0 release of a product and we'd like to track our progress toward a few milestones between now and the planned release date. For example, between now and milestone #1, we'd be trying to get 25 stories done and we'd want to know if we're on track to get them done by that time. It would be similar to tracking progress on epics using the epic burndown chart or progress on versions on the version report, but these stories will span several epics and they are all in a single version.

Is there a way to do this in JIRA Agile?

Thanks

[Ed Guy · Accepted solution]

Jim, You might try creating an overall version, and a separate version for each "milestone".  "Version 1.0" would use the overall start and end dates.  "Version 0.1" would include the first set of milestone dates, "Version 0.2" the second set of milestone dates, etc.  You can include a backlog item (JIRA issue) in multiple versions (drag-n-drop in the Backlog view, no duplication required) and so should be able to track progress toward completion of each milestone AND the overall release.  Give it a shot and let me know how it works.

[Jim Constant]

If I drag a story from one version to another, it changes the version. But if I edit the story I discovered that I can specify more than one version. I didn't realize I could do that until you mentioned this so, thank you! Any idea why I dragging and dropping doesn't work the same way for me?

[Danut M _StonikByte_]

Try the Release Burnup Burndown Chart offered by our Great Gadgets app. It allows you to display  milestones for the release in the burndown/burnup chart. A past milestone will be displayed in red color, if the Remaining work at that time was higher than Ideal Burndown, or in green color if it was lower, thus indicating if the milestone was reached or not.

For any questions or suggestions, contact support@stonikbyte.com.

Danut

[Jim Constant]

Ed, in case you're interested, there appears to be a bug in JIRA 6.3.3 with the totals that should be displayed in plan mode. I now have a bunch of stories in milestone releases but the totals are all 0:

bad-totals.png

Your suggestion will still help me a lot though - thanks again.

Jim

bad-totals.png

[Ed Guy]

Hey Jim.  Well, our installation was just upgraded to Jira 6.2.7.  I ran the sequence I described to you and it no longer works. Before the upgrade if I dragged "MYPROJ-1" onto "MYVERSION 1.0", then dragged "MYPROJ-1" onto "MYVERSION 0.1" the "Plan" view showed "2 Versions" or words to that effect.  Since the upgrade I'm seeing the behavior you describe.  Being able to edit the FixVersion is the saving grace, so thank you for exposing the problem for me.

If anyone from Atlassian is watching, this particular aspect of the upgrade was not an improvement, and IMO is a significant loss of functionality for some.

[Jim Constant]

Agreed, Ed. That's not an improvement at all. While I'm glad that I can Edit a story and add multiple releases to it, that's much more tedious than drag and dropping. Thanks for the help, Ed. I'm going your suggestion and I have a feeling it's going to work.

[Jim Constant]

Thanks for the response, Ed. I was thinking I might try that. I'd prefer to have one single release chart for 1.0 so I can see the progress from start to finish and see where milestones on that chart are relative to the trend line but this may have to do.

[Ed Guy]

I create a Version in JIRA, build a backlog of stories that cross several epics and plan sprints to do the work.  JIRA Agile does this well and the built-in charts and reports should provide you with all the tracking and reporting you need.