Reporting on changes to a Jira Plan

Question

We use the Jira Plans feature to identify work items our teams are committing to for a particular quarter. Items end up 'locked' in the Plan by a label being added to the Epic (ex. YYYY-QQ).

As a Program Manager I want to be able to see who has made changes to items in the Plan. People will make changes by changing rank, adding in new items to the plan by updating an Epic with a label, or removing items from the Plan by removing the label.

I know there is no audit trail on the Plan, but is there a way I can report on these changes? I want to be able to tell the story of how commitments changed overtime from when we started the quarter to when we ended. Thank you!

Sheila Connolly · Answer

Thanks @Trudy P Claspill I'll expand below:

* Are you talking about changes made in a Jira Plan that are then reviewed and committed back to the source items in the project(s)?* Yes, the Jira Plan is driven off of a filter that pulls all Epics from a defined list of Jira Projects that have a label of `YYYY-QQ`. Adding this label to the Epic is what 'commits' the item to a quarter plan.

* After quarterly planning, we meet as an org at the start of every quarter to review what Epics 'made the cut' and what priority they are in (ranked on the Timeline view of the plan)
* There are many team leaders who have access to this plan to make changes, and my ultimate goal is to be able to report out on how the scope of the quarterly plan changed as the quarter was moving. When I say scope of the plan I mean what items were in the plan at the start and what epics were added, removed, re-ranked in the plan as the quarter went on.
* Changes include:* Adding or removing the `YYYY-QQ` label from an Epic or Story after the quarter starts
* Changing the rank in the Timeline view of the plan (Epic was #1 and then something else is moved up)

Trudy P Claspill · Answer

Hello @Sheila Connolly

Are you talking about changes made in a Jira Plan that are then reviewed and committed back to the source items in the project(s)?

What exactly do you want to report? Be specific. The more detail you provide the better we will be able to advise you. Are you interested in reporting on counts of work items in the quarter at various times? The total of the work estimate (whether that is in duration or story points) for the work items in the quarter?

How do you designate a work item is committed to in a given quarter? Is it just based on the label being on their parent Epic?

Do the teams working on the items use Scrum boards or Kanban boards or a mix?

I suspect there is not anything natively pre-built that will satisfy your needs, but the more we know about your scenario then the more likely we are to be able to provide a meaningful answer.