JIRA Automation for Rejecting assignments when Team/TMs have no Bandwidth based on SP or effortsf

[Krishma Sood]

I am looking for a solution to set up or create JIRA Automation rules for Rejecting assignments when Team/Team Members have no Bandwidth based on Story points or efforts in a sprint. 

lets say the Team is assigned some tasks already and project plan has been created. Now a new Requirement comes up from a Product owner and we are trying to accomodate those efforts by assigning the Tasks /epic etc to Team or Team members in the current sprint. 

AUtomation rule should reject that and send a notification instead. 

[Bill Sheboy]

Hi @Krishma Sood -- Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

Although it is possible to do this with automation rules, I encourage not doing so.  Instead first consider discussing with the team what is happening, the root causes, and how to improve.

What you describe may be a symptom of other possible challenges.  For example:

• as you describe, a product owner / champion has requested work beyond the scope of the current, in-progress plan and has not effectively communicated why the change is needed to the plan
• in-progress work is "blocked", and rather than resolving the impediments the team starts another work item
• the team has "knowledge silos" where only some people have certain skills; as a result, people are selecting other work to start which they feel more capable of completing
• the team has challenges focusing on finishing one thing at a time, and so has a high work in progress (WIP) level
• team members do not understand their actual versus perceived capacity to complete work
• and so forth...

If an automation rule is used to manage the symptom, it may cause unintended consequences, such as people may no longer assign work to themself or not update the accurate status of work items.  Having the team discussion about the above topics, and the value of the plan, may help identify how to improve.

Kind regards,
Bill

[Krishma Sood]

@Bill Sheboy Thanks for your response. 

I am very new to JIRA automation and learning. 

I need to implement this scenario as an assignment and not in a real world application as such. I have to explain the pros and cons as well, so your response is definitely helpful when i would be showcasing the Automation.

So i am still looking for the Answer to How best i can achieve this.

Any Alternative approach which suits the right way of doing this is also accepted. 

Thanks,

Krishma

[Bill Sheboy]

Again in my opinion, solving this scenario with an automation rule is not helpful for a team, and I question if the "assignment" is missing information about why it is needed.  Made up scenarios like this make me wonder: exactly what concept is being taught that the solution would undermine the team's health?

Regardless of that...

As you describe being new to writing automation rules, I recommend first trying to create this rule.  Successfully using automation requires learning and experimentation.

To get you started on creating your rule, please refer to these documentation and example sources:

• https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/guides/automation/overview#what-is-automation
• https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/automation-template-library#/rule-list?systemLabelId=all&page=1&pageSize=20&sortKey=name&sortOrder=ASC
• https://support.atlassian.com/cloud-automation/docs/jira-smart-values-issues/
• https://support.atlassian.com/jira-software-cloud/docs/use-advanced-search-with-jira-query-language-jql/

For an idea about creating such a rule, consider triggering it on issue assignment, then using the lookup issues action for other issues assigned to the same person, and finally using rule conditions to decide next steps.  A similar rule would be needed with a trigger on issue creation as issues may be assigned when created.