Workflow & estimation best practice (setting up JIRA)

[Dave Cobb]

Can anyone advise on the best/preferred way to configure JIRA so that workflow is maintained and time spent is tracked please?

I'll explain further...

If I setup JIRA workflow to cater for Build, Code Reviews, Testing, etc... then it would mean that a single user story would be story pointed, flow followed, however, steps in the process, such as code review & testing can't be individually tracked (in terms of time spent).

I suppose that sub-tasks could be added to a single story to cater for code reviews & testing, but I don't believe that task tracking is particularly great at sub-task level (please correct me on this if I'm wrong).

I suppose I could break-out Build, Code Review, Testing, etc... as separate stories/tasks (linked to an epic), which could be estimated & time tracked better - although I would need different workflow for each task/story, which doesn't feel right.

How does everyone else handle this kind of setup in JIRA?

Another related question - If I have a 'Post Live Checks' task/story then I'm assuming that I'd have to create a new item type with a different workflow to ensure that it doesn't go through build & code review steps?

[Petter Gonçalves]

Hello Dave,

Can you please give us more details of how you are planning to track your Stories?

Are you planning to use JIRA reports together with the time tracking feature (Story points or Original Time estimate) where you would use Time Estimation x work logged or you just would like to track the time spent per status?

If you just would like to track the time Spent on Issues, I can think of two options that might work for you:

- You could use sub-tasks to track specific statuses, just like you mentioned

- You can use the pivot by status report provided by the Time Reports plugin which gives you the exact time an issue has spent in determined statuses:

If you are planning to use JIRA reports and the time tracking feature provided by JIRA, you could still use both solutions provided above, however, you would still need to manually sum the sub-task estimation/work logged in the parent issues because sub-task time tracking does not count/sum for JIRA reports.

About your last question, I believe you could create related issues linked to the original one to post check any details. Are you needing to include/sum the tracking of this issue with the original one or this is not a requirement?

Let me know if you still have any questions about it.

[Dave Cobb]

Thanks for your reply.

Ideally I want our team to use story points and not be concerned about tracking time estimates, but initially I would like to record Time Estimated against Time Spent for each task/sub-task to understand how long tasks are taking to complete and also understand where the slack is within the team.

I'm not too worried if JIRA can't supply the estimates vs actuals in a view, as long as it can be exported - then it can be managed via spreadsheet. Is this possible at a sub-task level?

At the moment I'm thinking of putting in place the following (please let me know if you think this feels ok):

* Each user story is linked to an Epic
* The Epic's status of 'Done' is used to determine when a feature is promoted & signed off in LIVE
* User stories will follow a workflow of: build/code-review/test/done
* Story points used against user stories
* Sub tasks to be tied to user stories and time tracked (estimated time & time spent)
* Epic is not complete until all stories are 'Done'