How to use sub-tasks to derive a generic workflow and support reporting ?

Question

Before I seek your advise .. some basic information on our needs.

We have a large user base and follow mixed development methodologies. Traditionally we are waterfall and slowing adopting to Agile/ Kanban.

Some teams follow create the stories and follow the from inception, design, development, QA, Production Rollout. Other teams does the same thing, but does by different user group, than a single team.

We are trying to fit these teams into a simple JIRA workflow and yet meet all their needs.

JIRA provides the flexibility to define a custom workflow. This is a good thing for small teams, but a nightmare for larger organizations with multiple people having brilliant ideas and a single ADMIN team is responsible for implementation and maintenance.

If I take the traditional JIRA workflow implementation, I can define needed states and transition actions for each of the JIRA projects.  Alternatively I am thinking of designing  a simple workflow and use sub-tasks to represent the states.

Assuming User requirements are captured as a JIRA story issue type , one can create multiple sub-tasks to complete the story. In this case, the sub-task can be simple workflow ToDo, inProgress and DONE states.

Keeping at a higher level, one can have following phases for a story

* Requirement Analysis phase
* Design & Development
* Testing in various environments (DIT/SIT /UAT)
* Production Deployment

It is also assumed that different groups can be responsible for each of these phases. In Agile teams, a single team can perform all these tasks.

I think it is efficient to create sub-tasks for each of these phases and manage these sub-tasks. Once all the sub-tasks are done, a parent story can be marked as "Done".

The ISSUES/ Pain Points I have is ...

* How does JIRA boards can represent the status of a story and its current phase ?
* How Can we simulate a sequential sub-tasks ?

All that users are looking for is a simple dashboard which can list

Number of stories in Design Phase Vs Development complete Vs Ready to deploy etc...

Alternatively, is there a better design to address these workflow issues ?

we certainly don't want to restrict uses with only 3 states model, at the same time, we don't want to create a free hand to all for creating their own workflows. We have to have a good balance. I am certainly not looking for "One process to fit everyone."

If you have a better implementation strategies, love to hear the same.

thank you for your patience to read this posting and looking forward for your expert opinion.

Evan Golden · Answer

I actually think this is a nice idea.  Use the Bob Swift create subtask plugin.  There you can create subtasks on a transition.  What I would do is when creating a task have a transition create the 4-5 subtasks automatically you need populating all the information you need from the original task.  Then you can manage those subtasks indepedently (assigning them etc), and mark you task as DONE once all are completed.  You can also link them to the original task (parent issue) from this plugin.  As for your Agile board, the subtasks will be indented, and if the status of the sub task (assuming they are using more complicated workflows), are different, then it will be hard to see what status the subtask is in.  What you could do is include status in the subtask card and keep them all at OPEN in the agile board until they are resolved to which you move them over to DONE.

Hope that makes sense?