Separate fields for Dev and QA/

Question

I have not used Jira for many years, but now find myself working with it again. I found answers to my question from several years ago, but am hoping that the issue has actually been given a better solution than "make a custom" field.

We currently have one Assignee field, and it is very confusing trying to figure out who worked on what because it changes. What is needed is two separate fields, one for Dev and one for QA (at minimum). Is there a better solution yet than creating a custom field? I feel like this should be something that is standard. Is there a "we have good news" update for me?

Nanette Marino · Answer

I can see the value in have a "current assignee" but not having fields for Dev and QA is a nightmare when in the end, every ticket has a QA assignee, and you don't know which dev worked on which ticket without dumpster diving. It takes a long time, and requires a separate spreadsheet when you are trying to track a large number of devs and tickets. I don't see a filter that will pull that info out for me. Once unassigned, the dev essentially disappears. While it remains in history, I have to open at every ticket to find the information I need. If custom fields is the only fix, I guess, such is life.

Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Answer

Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

No, the answer is still "use custom fields", because the current assignee is always supposed to be the person currently responsible for the issue getting done.  Multiple assignees do not work, you should never implement anything like that.

The whole point of the assignee field is that it (and its history) show the ownership of the issue as it progresses.

Custom fields for indicating who should be the assignee at certain points in the lifecycle is a good way to do it.  Atlassian don't do it because most of their customers don't need it, but the custom field approach lets everyone adjust to their needs without breaking other people's stuff.

You can easily use automation or scripting to do this - put your different workers into custom fields, and automate "set assignee to the named tester when moving issue into test"