Breaking Stories into Technical Disciplines

Question

We have an Epic that contains a number of stories. The Epic might be something such as Warehouse Management Software, and another Epic might be our Website. Within the Warehouse Management Software Epic we have tasks which are assigned to a release.

An example of a story might be, "login process" -> "user wants to be able to login"

This story relies on a series of tasks to be completed by different members of the team. For instance, we need the designer to design the screen, the back end API to be updated, and then the front end coder to connect the system, and last we need the tester to test the story for acceptance criteria match.

We have recently been making each "task" it's own story and assigning it to the user. BUT, what I would really like is to have these be their own "task" assigned to a user.

The reason we didn't do this was because when we made these "tasks" and assigned to a user, we were unable to see the tasks as items on a users active sprint board. We could see the main story, but not the sub tasks. I want to see the tasks I'm assigned to and be able to move my task, "design login" for instance, to the completed column.

How have others managed such requirements?

Julia Shcherbyna _SaaSJet_ · Answer

Hi @Nathan Leggatt

I think the add-on BPM (Business Process Manager) can be interesting for your case.

It was developed by my team to give companies the way to built and run team-friendly business processes with no code.

Here you can:

* Create a template of your process or SOP
* Add all steps with instructions, checklists, forms e.g. Select an assignee and project for each issue
* Once a template was started, the process will create an epic with issues.
* On Monitor Tab is progress for each active process, so It's easy to analyze and find delays.

Also, you can schedule a repetitive process, and corroborate it with Jira Automation (to start after the selected trigger).

I hope, it will be useful for you!

Regards,

Julia

Walter Buggenhout · Answer

Hi @Nathan Leggatt and welcome to the community!

This feels more like a discussion topic than a straightforward question. And even though questions like this often require more insight in what you are doing and how you are working, I'll try to suggest a few pointers.

When you try to organise work in Jira, it all comes down to organise your work with the concepts available in Jira. Just from what you explain, my initial 2 cents would be that you should probably set up separate projects for Warehouse Management Software and the Website rather than Epics.

By doing so, you free up the concept of an Epic to define a more functional, high level requirement such as your login process. And as soon as you are at that point, the different tasks to develop the login process become separate issues that will appear on your board, can be assigned to separate people and will all be linked to your login Epic for context.

There's quite a few additional questions to address. When you mention the tester who should be pulled in to validate acceptance criteria are met, that is something you would rather solve in your workflow by assigning a same story at the end of development to a different person.

Atlassian has an online Agile Coach microblog available that may help you familiarise yourself with quite a few concepts. It might be useful to have a look at this chapter on agile project management. It has some pretty good references to workflow and concepts like epics, stories, etc.

I hope this helps! If you feel you don't get there on your own, I would also recommend you to reach out to a Solutions Partner in your region to help you get on the right track.