Can I allocate time for external wait times without using a resource?

Question

I have a task in Jira portfolio such as "acquire approval". The task itself does not take much work but then it depends on potentially 1 week of waiting. I would like to capture this as a task someone has in their lane so we can track the weekly progress and see it still waiting. But in portfolio this shows up as using a resource. However, the team member can work on other tasks while the approval process is happening via some other team. Is there a way to model this?

So if I have 10 approval requests submitted, I would like to be able to have them all start at the same time which would use a resource for a day. Then the resource would be available to do other work. Finally, portfolio should show the estimated completion of those requests 1 week from the start date.

Thanks!

Janne Heusala · Answer

Hi,

I have the same problem as described by Matthew but above solution proposal doesn't work for me.

In my case all issues comprise design and test phases that consume developers' time but in between there is a "waiting period" that affects the lead time of an issue but doesn't use up developers' time. I haven't found any way to reflect this in Jira Portfolio plans.

The solution proposal requires to split each issue into three separate tasks, i.e. design, wait and test so that I coulde estimate an effort for "design" and "test" tasks but use estimated start- and end dates for the "wait" task. This is not usable, because it triples the amount of issues in the backlog and makes administration very cumbersome due to dependencies.

I need the "waiting time" to be incorporated in an issue so that it would affect the lead time of an issue but wouldn't consume any effort from resources.

I tried to split an issue into 3 stages, i.e. design, wait and test and allocate a lazy virtual team member just to wait - but this didn't work either because each new issue would have required a new lazy virtual team member:\

Is there any other way that I could try?

Allard van Helbergen · Answer

Hi @Matthew Wollerman

You could try using target start- and end dates in combination with not estimating the item.

In the configuration of your plan set the Unestimated item scheduling to be based off of target dates. In the scope view, on the issue that represents the approvalempty the estimate fieldset a target start- and end date

If you can't see the target start- and end date columns in the scope view, you can enable them from the table configuration on the right of the scope table.

This should make the issues show up on you schedule without using up any time.  Let me know if that works for you.

Cheers, Allard