Calculating the remaining time if there is no estimate.

Ingo Schult

I booked 1.5 hours for activities and 3 hours. In total, 4.5 hours were displayed under "Remaining", which I was correct. After that I fixed the 3 hours to 1.5 hours. Why and how is a spent time calculated when there is no estimated baseline value? The current ad is a bit confusing.

 

Nic Brough -Adaptavist-

I think you have answered your own question, but only because you are not quite sure of what each part of this field is for.

In the back-end, the field actually looks like two lumps of data, combined with data from other areas, from which various reports and displays are calculated.

In this case, the bit I think is confusing is when you say "I fixed the 3 hours to 1.5 hours".  I think when you say that, you mean (in "jira speak")  "I set the remaining estimate to 1.5 hours".

To help understand this, I'll try to explain the three "fields" you see, but in the wrong order:

• Estimated:  The original number you put on the issue when you created it.  This can be edited if you use "adjust original estimate" later.
• Logged:  This is the time people have put on work-logs
• Remaining:  This is the complicated one.  If you do not touch it, it will contain "estimated - logged".  Its default assumption is that when you estimate X, and then do Y, the remaining time is X - Y, it assumes your estimates are accurate and will come out.  But, you can amend it.  If you amend it after work is logged, it adjusts to reflect that - it's assuming that "ok, you might well have had a 0 estimate, but after 3 hours work, someone has told me there is 1.5 hours left".

This, to me, is right, but utterly counter-intuitive when you first see it.  I think it would have been easier to not allow "change remaining estimate", but call it "remaining estimate of original" and then had a fourth line for "updated expectations".