Should stories be moved to to inprogress if there tasks are in progress

Question

I am going to raise my query in the form of points. So here we start!

1. Suppose I am having a story and a task allotted to my name. Now, if I am working on the task then should that story be in progress?

2. Same condition as referred to in the above question. Now if there are 2 tasks 1 alotted to me and another to the developer, if I completed the story early(marked done) and the developer completes in the 3 next days then will that story be in progress for that much log time. If yes then can I start with another story without fearing about that a single user cannot have 2 stories in progress at a time

3. Is there any way by which I can check the amount of time invested in a particular story?

david_x_yates · Answer

Hello Sushant

Taking each of your points in turn:-

1. Yes. In progress means the story is being worked on. The fact you have the story allotted to you is causing the issues in 2 though. Remember stories are delivered by teams, not individuals.

2. The answer to this is to not assign stories to individuals. The team should work collectively to complete the highest priority stories first (by working together and completing sub-tasks which are assigned). WIP is therefore at team level for stories and task level for individuals. Your WIP will therefore show one task but the team discussion is remains focused on getting the top story completed quicker.

3. Use flow metrics

Carlos Garcia Navarro · Answer

Hi Sushant,

When you say tasks, do you mean sub-tasks? If so, as long as some work for the corresponding story is in progress I'd move it to the 'in progress' status. If you expect that one or more of the (sub)tasks will be in progress for (much) longer than yours, maybe you can create separate stories and link them using dependencies. In my experience, the process works better when a story can be completed within a sprint, and we try to size it that way.

Regarding point 3), this other post may help: https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Jira-Core-questions/How-can-I-display-inside-each-story-Total-Time-spent-by-Each/qaq-p/258273

Carlos