Tracking stages in Jira

[Jyothi Krishnan]

To track the progress of an epic and to collaborate with Product & Engineering, currently we are manually maintaining in confluence with checkboxes, before engineering teams start to look at stories in an epic.  

Looking for some suggestions if it's possible to track at Epic level in Jira instead, without much duplication of work.  

Product Readiness:

• Epic in Jira - Needed, Pending, Completed (There might be themes, initiatives for the foll. release but no epics created.  For eg., it can be a placeholder with the status "Needed")
• Stories in Jira - Needed, Pending, Completed
• UX - Needed, Pending, Completed

Dev Readiness: (All the 3 above should be checked before Dev starts looking at the epic)

• Epic Accepted
• Stories Agreed to
• High-Level Design - Yes, No, Pending

So far the suggestions I have are:

• to have 6 custom fields using labels for each (which is probably error-prone) or,
• adding more statuses (which I am not a big fan off)

Any suggestions appreciated. Thank you

[Ste Wright]

Hi @Jyothi Krishnan

What's the definition of Pending in this instance?

The reason I ask is that I'd usually suggest there is three main statuses to report on - To Do, In Progress and Done. Is pending in place of In Progress? I've assumed it does below.

I've seen this done a few ways in the past which might be of use:

Custom Fields:

• Create new fields at the Epic level and split them on the screen into tabs - these could be Select Lists or Checkboxes.
• Create a board to track the status of the work from creation through to development.
• Decide at which status each of the checkboxes is needed - then use card colours and JQL to track their completion - for example, put a red line on any Epic card which reaches "Ready for Dev" where one field is not "Yes"
• This allows direct traceability via fields - whilst also tracking correct use of the fields.

Sub-Tasks:

• Sub-Tasks can be under any issue type - not just stories. Create sub-tasks under the Epic to track the pre-work, with a simple workflow covering the above three statuses.
• You could still track these across a pre-development board / via JQL.
• Note: "Create Sub-Task" is not available in options (3-dots icon) on the new view - you'll need to change to the old view to create the first one

Status:

• Track this via the Epic statuses or via stories themselves (or a combination of the two).
• Stories and Epics have a "Ready for Dev" status - this means the stories have been designed, sized and refined with the whole team. 
• Prior to this status there might be others - such as In Analysis, In Design, etc - which cover the pre-development work.
• This avoids the need for additional admin work - and can still be tracked across a board. In some instances we have a pre-development and a development board.

Let me know if any of these suit your use case!

Ste

[Jyothi Krishnan]

Thank you very much Stephen.  Yea, Pending could be "In Progress".  

I kinda like the first suggestion but, I have not tried splitting screen into tabs.  Have to play around with that and will run these ideas by my team.

Final report expected

Epic id	Epic Name	Priority	Epic in Jira	Stories in Jira	UX	Epic Accepted	Stories Agreed to	High Level Design
1	test1	Critical	Done	In Progress	Done	Yes	Yes	Yes
2	test2	High	In Progress	In Progress	Not Needed	No	No	Not Needed
3	test3	Med	Done	Todo	In Progress	No	No	In Progress

[Ste Wright]

Hi @Jyothi Krishnan

Awesome! Give them a go and let us know which one works out for you!

As this is Jira Cloud it'll be tabs in the "old view" but panels in the "new view" - panels are groups of fields you can expand from the right-hand fields menu.

The view you're looking for would be possible using JQL from the first option as they're custom fields on the same issuetype level.

For the others, you'd need to consider either:

• A method to order them as parent/child via JQL (eg. custom label)
• Creating the view needed via a Confluence page, Dashboard, App or Reporting Tool

Ste

[Sandbox1]

Hi Stephen,

I picked your first suggestion above and was able to get the attached report.  Thank you so much.  Now, I need help with this bullet point above

"Decide at which status each of the checkboxes is needed - then use card colours and JQL to track their completion - for example, put a red line on any Epic card which reaches "Ready for Dev" where one field is not "Yes""

I have added 2 statuses called "Product Readiness" and "Dev Readiness"[ToDo] which transitions to Development status.  Is there any tutorial that you can point me to achieve the coloring?

[Ste Wright]

Hi @Sandbox1 

Card colours are part of the board configuration. You'll need to be a Board Admin and then from your board:

1. Click options (3-dots icon in top-right) > Board Settings
2. Select Card Colours from the left-hand side
3. Choose "Queries" to base your colours on
4. Enter JQL per colour

I'd suggest using red and green if there are just two stages, as traffic light colours are easy to recognise. I'm not sure what your criteria is but it might be green is sort of like this:

"Storie(s) in Jira" = Completed AND UX in (Completed, N/A) AND "Stories Agreed To" = Yes AND "High Level Design" = Yes and "T Shirt Size" is NOT EMPTY

^ What I'm doing is building up JQL based on the criteria you have for ready vs not ready.

Decide how many colours you need and what criteria is required for each then build up your JQL from there. Just remember to not have too many colours - they are only coloured stripes and you want them to be easy to remember without a key :)

Ste

[Sandbox1]

Thank you.  I was able to setup the color based on the query.  Does this apply for Epics too?  If so, in which view the color show up?

[Sandbox1]

Ok, I see the card color only in the Active Sprint view :(  Since, this is before even moving into a sprint, for eg., want to color code an epic so that from the backlog view or in a dashboard, I know which epic has completed product readiness and completed engineering readiness and ready to be moved into a sprint.