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When assign back to reporter?

Ã shild Botheim

Can you please define whether or not the reporter should be the assignee as well when an issue is resolved? We currently have a discussion about this, and I can't find an answer online. This is what I find about JIRA Concepts (https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRA/What+is+an+Issue):

Assignee — the person to whom the issue is currently assigned.

Reporter— the person who entered the issue into the system.

...which would indicate that the reporter should also be the assignee when an issue is resolved, but - then JIRA Concepts says this:

Resolved — A Resolution has been identified or implemented, and this issue is awaiting verification by the reporter. From here, issues are either 'Reopened' or are 'Closed'.

Can you please answer what is common use / what is JIRA's intention in this question?

Thank you!

Accepted answers

Ã shild Botheim

I gather that there is no clear answer to this question, and JIRA-administrators need to find out what works best within the different projects. I like the idea of making a new workflow step called "Testing". The whole point must be that every user knows what the different workflows mean, and what to do. I am still of the opinion that you should assign the issue to the one who is expected to take action, regardless if it's the same person as the reporter. As a test manager I would like to be assigned the issue when it is resolved, and I can assign it to a tester whom validates the fix and then closes it. This tester may be the same person who reported the issue. I think this workflow is clear and works well. But I understand that there are different opinions about this approach.

Thank you for joining the discussion!

All comments

Renjith Pillai

Changing the Assignee back to Reporter and really make reporting difficult. You will have no clue who actuall resolved the issue without looking into the history. It should be left with the Original assignee itself.

Verification from reporter only means that the reporter changes the issue from Resolved to Closed. But not assignee change.

sap1

I agree with Renjith.I guess it should make sense to keep it in the Assignees name.

Ã shild Botheim

I disagree as I am used to assign the issue back to Reporter when the resolution should be verified - and there is no confusion.. Reporter is just for information as I see it, and Assignee is always the person to whom the issue is currently assigned. It is not always Reporter that can verify the resoultion, he or she can be out of office and so another (tester) will have to verify the resoultion. Hence it is most clear to always assign the issue to the person who should look at it / do something.

MatthewC

I wouldn't bother setting the assignee back to the reporter. The diea of resolved is a QA gateway to ensure the issue has been resolved. In many situations, the person raising the bug isn't the best suited person to check that it's fixed, that should be a good tester!

the reporter can be notified via an email that the issue is resolved or closed.

I tend to find the assignee field on a closed issue to be of limited use, after all it doesn't tell you worked on it, who was the analyst? who was the developer? who was the tester?

For that we have distinct custom fields and copy the assignee field to these target fields as part of the workflow.

By the time you're at the end of a workflow, the assignee is of limited use.

Ã shild Botheim

In my experience (I am a test manager) testers usually report the issues. I definetly think that the reporter should be the assignee as well, if he or she is expected to take any action (e.g. re-test it, change status). I think the assignee-field should be used whenever you assign the issue to someone else, regardless if it's the reporter or not. You don't loose track of things if people leave a comment everytime they've done something to an issue. But I wish JIRA was clearer on what they think about this matter.. It should be written in the default-workflow graph.

MatthewC

I guess if you are a test manager & 100% of your bugs are reported by testers than that makes sense in your world but it won't for everyone else, which is probably why there is not a single recommended way of doing it.

My current client have business usres, Devs and testers all using Jira. A reporter will often be a business user and they are not typically the best person to check the resolution.

Different use cases, different solutions. that's the strength of Jira. I wouldn't look for one solution to rule them all.

ConradR

Often Issues are reported by non technical users like managers or sales. In this case I wouldn't assign them back to the reporters because they won't verify it anyway.

In my company we have created the workflow step "Testing" which more or less replaces "Resolved" in the day to day business. Most of our internal issues go the following path: Open -> In Progress -> Testing -> Closed.

The good point about this "Testing" Step: Everyone knows what it means. Developers just use the step if something needs to be tested and Testers/Managers easily can find all issues that still need to be tested.

Of course we still use "Resolved" for tasks.

Ã shild Botheim

Thank you for joining the discussion!

Esther Poon

Even for test manager/test-group, I still fail to see changing Assignee back to Reporter is a proper usage in JIRA. What you described is the "workflow" customization part of JIRA, which can be done in issue STATUS field.

If special notices is preferred for "someone" to verify the fix/resolution, then add "Waiting For VERIFICATION" and "VERIFIED" two states in STATUS field. If "someone" is not the reported, which is a pretty common case, then add a "Tester" field in JIRA.

Ã shild Botheim

I disagree with you. Even if you leave the Assignee to the last person assigned to the bug does not necessarily means that this person actually solved the issue. What if several people have been involved in fixing the bug? Then you still need to look at the history to get the full picture. If people comment the issue every time they've done something about it, this usually makes the lifetime of the issue easy to understand. I still think that the issue should be assigned back to the reporter if she or he is expected to take any action ie. verify the fix.. :-)

Renjith Pillai

Your call finally In fact, most activities will have contributions from many people, direct or indirect. The term assignee means who owned that issue and brought it to closure. If you business process involves assigning the same issue to multiple people during the course of the workflow, then it makes sense to return it back to the reporter as you say.

SrinivassaV

There may be other situations but typically 80% or more bugs are reported QA folks.

SrinivassaV

If you look at real numbers I am sure 95% of the bugs are written by QA folks and not "others". Also more than 75% of the bugs are verified by the same QA person unless they moved on to other projects. So it absolutely makes sense to assign it back to the reporter if you are going to use the 80/20 rule.

It might even better if the application has an option to set the assignee after resolving automatically. They can give three options: 1) Assign it to reporter 2) Leave it as is 3) Assign it to a specific person (may be a QA manager who can then assign appropriately). 1) should be the default.

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