Fogbugz-style workflows?

Jesse Keller

I'm transitioning from FogBugz to Jira, and I'm a bit confused by the workflows. Can any fellow converts share how they've adapted?

In FB, the workflow looks like this:

1. Person A opens a case (status: active)
2. Person B indicates that everything that needs doing has been done (status: resolved)
3. Person A either blesses the resolution (status: closed) or rejects it (back to active)

I see that Jira has resolutions, but I'm not sure how to use them to emulate the FB workflow.

Dave Theodore [Coyote Creek Consulting]

Fogbugz "workflow" is just changing the values of a field. Jira's workflow behaves like a flow diagram.  Additionally, there are functions associated with each Transition that control what happens, who can execute the transition, etc.

Think of the workflow in JIra as the journey that the issue takes from when it is open to when it is closed.  That journey can be a simple "ToDo" / "In Progress" / "Done" or can be as complex as you need it to, so that you can handle approvals, blockers and whatever your process demands.  The Resolution is the level of "fixedness" of the issue. If you add the Resolution field to a workflow transition screen, it is a required field, so it will force someone to set a value.  You would only do this where it makes sense, and not add it to a screen where the issue is not resolved.  If you allow issues to be reopened, you need to clear that field so that you don't end up with issues in illegal states, like In Progress workflow status and Fixed resolution. 

In your example, a workflow something like this may make sense:

Development Queue -> Dev In Progress -> QA Queue -> QA In Progress -> Done

Obviously, change the names to be more friendly, and add the Resolution field only to the screen between QA In Progress and Done, or better yet, set it via Post Function.