Best way to document technical writing in JIRA?

Question

What is the best way to document technical writing tasks in JIRA? It's hard to get what I'm doing to match up with the sprint process. Adding subtasks holds up the sprints because I'm not always able to get the resources I need to document a change within a sprint, even if the necessary changes are done. There are checkboxes to indicate that an issue needs documentation but they don't appear to do anything. Should I create an epic that links all the related issues that I need to document?

Jessica_jeima6 · Answer

Thanks for the quick and helpful reply! As the writer, I do sit in on scrum to get a general idea of which issues are coming up but I don't work to the same schedule. Making my own Kanban that links to stories and other tasks sounds like a good way to ensure visibility while not holding the sprints back, and it also matches with my personal work tracking.

Mark Segall · Answer

Hi @Jessica and welcome to the community!

First, you need to make the determination as to whether the tech writer is part of the scrum team or not.

If they are part of the scrum team, they need to make commitments on what they can complete each sprint just like any other team member.  If they are working at the same cadence as the developers (usually not) then yes, sub-tasks would make sense.  Otherwise, they should have Tasks that are linked to the relevant stories.  I've seen teams where the tech writer (and sometimes QA) are a sprint behind the rest of the team which is fine.  The important thing is that they are part of sprint planning like any other team member.

If they work on their own schedule, they're not part of the team. I would recommend they work on their own board (likely Kanban) and like above, ensure their tasks are linked to the relevant stories.