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How to track non development tasks for dev projects in Jira

wendy.yurcic

We run lean kanban boards, but are new to Jira and are having trouble determining how to track tasks that are not related to development but need to be tracked as part of the project and overall effort for the project. Such as development of training materials, requirement gathering, training sessions, communications, etc. Task that are more traditional project tasks. We have been using 3 different software apps, but would like to do everything in Jira since the majority of our tracking and reporting live in Jira.

Accepted answers

Walter Buggenhout

Hi @wendy.yurcic,

This is a common challenge and pretty easy to resolve. The common tasks you mention are a different type of work, as you correctly observe. They usually follow another, much simpler process or workflow than - let's say - stories or bugs.

So it is perfectly fine to create one/more specific issue types for them and apply a simple workflow (to do - in progress - done).

I often start by using the default task issue type for this type of work. But if it is really meaningful for your teams to distinguish between e.g. meetings, requirements gathering etc., it is perfectly ok to create additional issue types for those.

All comments

Matías Génova

Wendy, i have the same problem at my Organization.

We are trying to think of each Jira project as a piece of software. But when creating issues that are not software development, such as training, communication, etc., we are having some problems. The first thing we came up with is to use labels to indicate something, but I'm not sure it's the most convenient.

I will appreciate other experiences or help in this regard.

Walter Buggenhout

Hi @wendy.yurcic,

So it is perfectly fine to create one/more specific issue types for them and apply a simple workflow (to do - in progress - done).

Matías Génova

@Walter BuggenhoutThanks a Lot.

So, it is correct to think that a jira project, which in our organization represents a software application, will have incidents of this type (bugs, improvements, etc.) and others of another type, which will have a different workflow. These different flows, displayed on a single board, generate some problem in your experience?

Walter Buggenhout

Definitely, @Matías Génova. That is absolutely common practice. Boards allow you to map statuses from different workflows. So it is technically entirely possible to deal with different workflows in a single board.

However, in software teams, boards are commonly used to track the development backlog. As Wendy's question originally suggests, some work is simply not part of the development backlog and because of that is ideally not included in the same board. Using specific issue types allows you to filter non-development items away from the development backlog and let's you easily add them to a dashboard or another (kanban) board related to your project.

wendy.yurcic

@Walter BuggenhoutThank you so much for this information. I have, since posting this, started exploring "tasks", and we will be adding function specific "task" issue types. How do you filter non-dev issue types from the kanban board and added (make them visible on an additional board? Can you have 2 kanban boards on one project?

suzanne.potter

Hi! I'm new to Jira and appreciate this group continuing to share information on this topic as this is important to my project management needs as well. @Walter Buggenhout if you figure out an answer to your last question about filtering non-dev issues or having 2 kanban boards please let me know! Thanks!

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