Compare Microsoft's TFS to Jira in terminology, workflow, etc.

[scott.fawcett]

I have 10+ years experience using TFS (and scrum).  Only 1 week on Jira.  I'd really appreciate some feedback to help me make the transition quickly.  

In TFS we defined user stories and broke them down into tasks (for developers, testers, tech writers, etc.).  Stories were typically defined in days and tasks in hours (for us).  For each sprint, at a high level, we assigned the number of stories based on our historical velocity.  TFS allowed us to define the number of days available for each developer for the sprint, so for sprint planning we could then compare the total available developer time to the total estimate for tasks to ensure a story didn't blow up and put the team in a scenario where the sprint work could not be completed (since once we got into sprint planning we ignored the estimate of the story...it could have been estimated months ago and no longer valid).

Sprint burndown charts used the total of the tasks estimated, so I could easily track if the team was on track for the sprint on any day.  Release burndown charts used the story estimates.  Velocity was calculated (by me manually) using original estimates for stories (not tasks).

Here are some specific questions:

1.  From what I can see, I can estimate a story.  I can also link sub-tasks, but there's no field for an estimate.  The sprint burndown chart also tracks the story estimates.  Where I have difficulty is that a story can take multiple days, so I get very little feedback on a daily basis as to whether the sprint is on track.  What am I missing?

2. The Active Sprint view only shows To Do, In Progress and Done columns.  I've heard this is because it's meant to focus on developer tasks and doesn't include QA.  I can't find where to add columns, so I'm thinking this might be true.  But that seems very odd to me.  I'm only interested in how well the entire team is progressing towards a story being done, so I want to see developer and QA tasks in a single view.  If QA is behind I need to find QA resources...or turn a developer into QA to get stories to Done.  Is that view available?

3. Is there a view to see if the individuals on the team are overbooked at any time during the sprint?  I had that view in TFS and it was awesome to make sure we were reassigning tasks if somebody was falling behind.

4.  I'm also looking into Easy Agile Use Story Maps, as this was something that was missing from TFS.  If you have experience with that I'd be interested in hearing about your experiences.  To me this has great potential to show progress for a release to stakeholders outside of the development team.

Any help would be appreciated.