Workload Management in JIRA vs. JIRA Work Management

Question

Hello,

We are a small team in a Finance org (non-engineering).  We are a shared services team and we work on multiple initiatives across the company.    This makes it bit challenging for us to know who is doing what on the team; who is overloaded; who is underutilized.

We need a Workload Management System (NOT a time management system). In other words, we want to manage indivdual/ team capacity but not micro-manage time.    Some of our tasks are operational in nature; some tasks take less time vs some  that can stay open for several months.   We don't follow any Sprint methodolgy for that reason.

Could someone confirm and recommend if there is an Atlassian product that can meet this requirement.  Could it be JIRA Planner? Could it be JIRA Work Management? Other product?

Thanks.

Nick.

Nick Chhabra · Answer

Thanks Mickael for additional context. I appreciate it.

Mikael Sandberg · Answer

However told you that you need to add hours or story points is wrong. Yes, story points or hours can be used to determine how much effort it take to do that particular issue, but it is not a requirement.

Here is a blog post from one of Atlassian's partners that goes over the how.

Work management have a board that allows you to group issues based on the assignee for example, and you can use that to manage the workload. If you use a software project and the Kanban board you can use the backlog and set limits on the columns and manage the workload that way. With the limits you can control how many issues the team is working on, and once an issue is done then you can move a new issue in from the backlog.

Nick Chhabra · Answer

Hi @Mikael Sandberg - thanks for the prompt response.  At a high level, I can see these tools - Jira, Jira Work Management, Trello - work.  Where can I find the granular details on HOW.  I am familiar with Jira and I used it in my prior role.  Internally, I was told that Jira may not be a good option if we don't add Hours or Story Points to each story.   But, then how would we use Jira to manage team capacity, not just the tasks assigned to each asignee.

Any pointers you can provide would be appreciated.