Rules of tasks naming

[Julia Indyukova]

Hi guys

Could you share your experience please

My colleagues and me are having a discussion about core rules of naming tasks in Jira. My experience is - to start with a verb but keep them short.

My colleagues insist on absence of any rules except for tasks except being short and understandable.

What do you think?

[John Funk]

Hi Julia,

As long as the summary is descriptive enough that people know what it means, that is sufficient for me. Statuses in the workflow, however, I prefer to be verbs. 

[Julia Indyukova]

But you are talking about summary, not the topic field. I am talking about "topic".

"Тема" - on the pic.

[John Funk]

Your original question was about naming tasks. That is what the Summary field does. What EXACTLY are you trying to accomplish? Please write in your own language if you feel more comfortable with that. 

[Rustem Shiriiazdanov _Actonic_]

@Julia Indyukova I second @John Funk here, it looks like there could some confusion. I assume your Jira is running Russian translation, and according to the materials I found, the "Тема" in many cases is the same as "Summary", whereas in other cases it's "Epic" (see pictures below from some website I found)

It would be indeed appreciated if you could explain in details what you want to achieve.

[Rustem Shiriiazdanov _Actonic_]

Hi @Julia Indyukova

In our Team we have a naming convention where we put affected Products Components names and then short description of what is to be done (verb + description). E.g. "URT | Pivotopia | Do Something". It allows us quickly (without any filters and clicks on the task itself) get the context of what a task is about (in example above it will be clear for the team that the task is about doing something with Pivotopia data processing library in URT component of the product we develop). 

We have been using that kind of names for tasks for years now, and quite happy with that.

Regards,

Rustem

[Walter Buggenhout]

Hi @Julia Indyukova,

Since it is all about entering free text in a tool, it is better to talk about working agreements rather than rules, imho.

But there are a couple of simple guidelines and best practices that can make your life easy (or difficult). Some examples:

• First and foremost: if you work together with multiple people inside Jira, make sure that everybody understands what is expected to be done. So make sure to use the summary and description fields to clearly explain this. 
• The summary is what you see in Jira when you look at a list of tasks (in e.g. list view or All work). Using clear, descriptive titles there will help you avoid to open every single task's details to get what you are supposed to do.
• There are different types of work that you can manage in Jira, obviously. We used to have a practice in place where we tried to write summaries differently depending on the type of work (and corresponding work type in Jira). A few examples:
  • For stories, we used the traditional story format (As a user, I want to ... so I ...).
  • For bugs, we had the habit to describe what was not working (tax calculation at the bottom of the xyz form shows invalid result) 
  • For a sales opportunity, we combined the customer name with the type of opportunity it was for. (e.g. Atlassian - Jira upgrade to 500 users)
  • For tasks, we tried to summarise the desired end state (e.g. CEO Office is redecorated).

Keep in mind that not everyone in your organisation is a Shakespeare and/or as skilled writer. Having some guidelines and examples in place always helps to make it easier. But sticking to the principle that the better you define work inside the tool, the less time you lose to figure out afterwards what was actually intended might just be the most important thing to agree amongst you all.

Hope this helps!

[Julia Indyukova]

Thanks, but I'm mostly interested in naming but not in description.

[Walter Buggenhout]

Yes, @Julia Indyukova. All the examples I mentioned for work types are examples we used as naming principles for the summary field. 

[Julia Indyukova]

Does summary = topic field in your case?

[Betty Bailey]

thanks a lot

[Kseniia Trushnikova]

Hey @Julia Indyukova,

Yes, Тема is the same as Summary.