nav[aria-label="Primary Navigation"] { padding: 0; & ul { list-style: none; width: 100%; display: flex; flex-direction: row; justify-content: start; align-items: start; gap: 30px; padding: 0; & li { margin: 0; } & ul li { list-style: none; } } }

How are you managing your day-to-day tasks? In Jira?

Aimee Roddick (Walter)

As a programme manager, in my experience, Jira works really well for complex projects or development projects/workflows, however is too complex and too much overhead for day-to-day task management. For things like meeting follow-ups, chasing emails, and small tasks, those items tend to fall outside of Jira, and other tools, such as Microsoft To Dos, don't work well either, so they fall through the cracks.

What are people using for your task management? Are you using Jira? If so, how have you made that successfully? Or are you using something else?

Accepted answers

Trudy P Claspill

Hello @Aimee Roddick _Walter_

Welcome to the Atlassian community.

Can you provide more information on what about Jira you consider to be too much overhead?

What o you see as the key features of day to day task management?

In your environment are you administrators allowing you to use Team Managed projects?

Ollie Guan

Hi @Aimee Roddick _Walter_ ,

When you say Jira feels “complex” and has “too much overhead,” do you mean specifically for tracking work from a programme/project manager perspective, or also for breaking down tasks at the individual developer level?

In our case, we usually don’t break down and track every minute of an 8‑hour workday in Jira. We intentionally keep about 30–35% of the time as a buffer that isn’t logged as Jira tasks. That buffer covers daily meetings and other small, ad‑hoc activities.

The key point is how detailed you and your team want to be in tracking this kind of work. If you are using sprint-based development, the burndown chart usually provides good visibility into your team’s progress, but not every single activity needs to be captured in Jira. You might consider only creating Jira issues for items that are essential to delivery (e.g. user stories, bugs, larger tasks), and leave very small, low‑risk personal reminders outside Jira in a lighter-weight tool.

Mary from Planyway

Hi @Aimee Roddick _Walter_

In my experience, Jira can work for day-to-day task management, but only if it’s used intentionally and supported by the right views.

Jira is excellent at handling complex delivery workflows, but where it often falls down is visibility and usability for small, cross-cutting tasks. Those tasks usually are in Jira… they’re just hard to see, easy to forget, and scattered across projects.

For granular resource and task management, you can try Planyway for Jira.

Manage team workload by mapping out issues on the timeline and allocating them to teammates. Check who is working on what and optimize your workload process with Jira resource management.

It sits on top of Jira and gives you:

A timeline view of all Jira issues (across projects and teams)
Clear visibility into who is working on what and when
The ability to plan and rebalance workload visually

Liam Do - DevSamurai

Hello @Aimee Roddick _Walter_, welcome to the community!

We keep day-to-day task management in Jira as simple as possible. For many projects, a basic Kanban board is all we need – no extra complexity. When we need more structure, like seeing dependencies or overall timelines, we add Timeline or Roadmap views. Sometimes a quick spreadsheet helps us plan batches of tasks before syncing decisions back to Jira.

We stay inside the Atlassian ecosystem whenever we can, using native features first. If something is missing, we look for solutions on the Atlassian Marketplace rather than external tools.

Integrations only come in when the team already uses another app heavily. Otherwise, native Jira keeps things streamlined and reduces context switching.

Fatma Uzundemir from The Starware

Hi @Aimee Roddick _Walter_

This is a very common situation, and you’re definitely not alone.
In short: Jira can be used for daily follow-ups, but if it’s not set up properly, it can quickly become complex and difficult to use.

How can you manage this in Jira?

If you want to stay fully inside Jira, a few approaches that work reasonably well are:

📌Personal issues / task issue type

Create a lightweight issue type (e.g. “Personal Task” or “Follow-up”) that’s excluded from boards and reports. This avoids polluting team backlogs.

📌 Automation for reminders

Jira Automation can help with chasing and nudging:

Trigger on status change or due date
Send yourself an email or Slack reminder
Schedule follow-ups (e.g. 24h / 48h later)
Filters & dashboards for “my small stuff”

Dedicated JQL filters like assignee = currentUser() combined with a simple dashboard can help, but it still requires discipline.
That said, many programme managers I’ve worked with hit the same wall you described:
Jira is great for structured work, but it’s simply too much overhead for micro-tasks like meeting notes, email chases, or “remind myself later” items.

If you’re open to using third-party apps, I can suggest a cleaner alternative: Use Jira for projects and add a separate layer for personal tasks. If you’re looking to avoid creating “official” Jira tickets for everything, this is where a hybrid approach works really well.

🌱 One option is Getting Work Done, which is designed specifically to bridge that gap:

🔒 Private tasks

Create lightweight tasks that live inside Jira but are visible only to you.
They’re not Jira issues, so they don’t affect boards, backlogs, or reports.

🧠 Single place to work

Your personal follow-ups sit right next to your assigned Jira issues — no context switching to external tools.

🌱 Personal workflow support
📥 Inbox for quick capture
🗓️ Agenda for flexible planning
🎯 Priority matrix
🍅 Pomodoro for focus

This works especially well for programme managers who want structure without process overhead.
Time-based nudges (the “don’t let me forget” problem)
For cases where timing matters — for example:

“Remind me 4 hours before the due date”
“Ping me tomorrow if I haven’t followed up”

a dedicated reminder layer helps a lot.

🌱 With a Reminder app, you can:

Set reminders relative to dates or events
Send reminders to yourself or others
Avoid relying on memory or calendar clutter

Bottom line:

Jira = excellent for shared, structured work
Lightweight personal tasks + reminders = best way to stop things falling through the cracks

That combination tends to work far better than forcing everything into Jira issues.

Hope this helps!

🍀 To learn more, feel free to contact me or explore the application through the Atlassian Marketplace link I’ve provided. 🍀

Disclaimer: I work for the vendor of Getting Work Done and the Reminder app.

All comments

Trudy P Claspill

Hello @Aimee Roddick _Walter_

Welcome to the Atlassian community.

Can you provide more information on what about Jira you consider to be too much overhead?

What o you see as the key features of day to day task management?

In your environment are you administrators allowing you to use Team Managed projects?

Ollie Guan

Hi @Aimee Roddick _Walter_ ,

Ollie Guan

BTW, Rovo should be able to give you some suggestions on this topic as well, so you might want to try having a conversation with it.

What kind of suggestions would Rovo give? For example, it might:

Help you design a lightweight Jira project (or board) specifically for your personal day‑to‑day tasks, with a very simple workflow and minimal fields.

Recommend how to separate “project work” (tracked in Jira) from tiny ad‑hoc tasks that can stay in a simpler tool, while still keeping good overall visibility.

Propose concrete Jira filters and dashboards (e.g., “my tasks due this week,” “today’s focus”) so you can quickly see what you need to work on.

Suggest integrations between Jira and tools like Outlook/Teams, so important tasks show up in your calendar or notifications without extra manual effort.

Help you define a practical rule set for your team (e.g., what must be in Jira, what can be left out) to reduce overhead but still keep enough tracking for planning and reporting.

Mary from Planyway

Hi @Aimee Roddick _Walter_

In my experience, Jira can work for day-to-day task management, but only if it’s used intentionally and supported by the right views.

For granular resource and task management, you can try Planyway for Jira.

Manage team workload by mapping out issues on the timeline and allocating them to teammates. Check who is working on what and optimize your workload process with Jira resource management.

It sits on top of Jira and gives you:

A timeline view of all Jira issues (across projects and teams)
Clear visibility into who is working on what and when
The ability to plan and rebalance workload visually

Liam Do - DevSamurai

Hello @Aimee Roddick _Walter_, welcome to the community!

We stay inside the Atlassian ecosystem whenever we can, using native features first. If something is missing, we look for solutions on the Atlassian Marketplace rather than external tools.

Integrations only come in when the team already uses another app heavily. Otherwise, native Jira keeps things streamlined and reduces context switching.

Aimee Roddick (Walter)

Thank you for your answer!

I'm thinking more of those day-to-day personal tasks that you need to quick create.

"Follow up with X" from meeting notes

"Schedule meeting with Y"

It's what a lot of people use Microsoft To Dos or Google Tasks for, and I'm wondering if you're managing those simple day-to-day tasks in Jira as well on a personal board or where you're managing those tasks?

Aimee Roddick (Walter)

The ability to easily create and track personal tasks that you need to do throughout your day or week, such as just managing your meetings or follow-ups. We have Team Managed projects, but I'm thinking more like personal task management here.

Liam Do - DevSamurai

Got it! Those quick personal follow-ups and reminders are exactly what tools like Microsoft To Do or Google Tasks are made for.

Jira is great for team work and shared tracking, but not a space for lightweight personal tasks.

I am using a personal board to manage those tasks, and it works just fine. I think the best way to handle this is by using an external tool that has integration/connector with Jira.

Trudy P Claspill

Most application suites that provide a calendar tool, like Google and Microsoft, also provide a task tracker/reminder feature within the calendar tool. Mostly I use that calendar tool with task tracking for things that don't need to be visible to or shared with colleagues.

Fatma Uzundemir from The Starware

Hi @Aimee Roddick _Walter_

How can you manage this in Jira?

If you want to stay fully inside Jira, a few approaches that work reasonably well are:

📌Personal issues / task issue type

Create a lightweight issue type (e.g. “Personal Task” or “Follow-up”) that’s excluded from boards and reports. This avoids polluting team backlogs.

📌 Automation for reminders

Jira Automation can help with chasing and nudging:

Trigger on status change or due date
Send yourself an email or Slack reminder
Schedule follow-ups (e.g. 24h / 48h later)
Filters & dashboards for “my small stuff”

🔒 Private tasks

Create lightweight tasks that live inside Jira but are visible only to you.
They’re not Jira issues, so they don’t affect boards, backlogs, or reports.

🧠 Single place to work

Your personal follow-ups sit right next to your assigned Jira issues — no context switching to external tools.

🌱 Personal workflow support
📥 Inbox for quick capture
🗓️ Agenda for flexible planning
🎯 Priority matrix
🍅 Pomodoro for focus

“Remind me 4 hours before the due date”
“Ping me tomorrow if I haven’t followed up”

a dedicated reminder layer helps a lot.

🌱 With a Reminder app, you can:

Set reminders relative to dates or events
Send reminders to yourself or others
Avoid relying on memory or calendar clutter

Bottom line:

Jira = excellent for shared, structured work
Lightweight personal tasks + reminders = best way to stop things falling through the cracks

That combination tends to work far better than forcing everything into Jira issues.

Hope this helps!

🍀 To learn more, feel free to contact me or explore the application through the Atlassian Marketplace link I’ve provided. 🍀

Disclaimer: I work for the vendor of Getting Work Done and the Reminder app.

Aimee Roddick (Walter)

Thank you! I am actually working on building my own tool, Trackli (gettrackli.com), so I was curious what others were using and if they were running into a similar issue.

E Self Storage

I don’t put every small task into Jira. I use it for work that needs an owner, a deadline, visibility, or input from someone else; quick follow-ups stay on a simple daily list.

My rule is fairly basic: if a task will take more than 15–20 minutes, affects a project milestone, or could block another person, it goes into Jira. Chasing an email, sending meeting notes, or making a quick call stays on my personal list.

After each meeting, I spend two minutes writing down actions before joining the next one. I also keep one calendar slot near the end of the day called “follow-ups” and clear as many small items as possible then.

I tried tracking everything in Jira once. The board filled up with tiny tickets, and I spent more time maintaining them than completing them. A mixed system has worked better, but only because I review both places every morning.

Welcome!

It looks like you're new here. Sign in or register to get started.

Quick Links

Find more posts tagged with

jira

cloud

jira-cloud