Why do I need to assign team members when defining the estimates of a task in JIRA Portfolio?

[Eduardo Moratto]

I am having an issue when input the estimate of a task, I receive the following error

"Scheduling not possible due to skill gaps.

This work item requires stages or skills that none of the assignable people have. Either make sure the relevant people have all necessary abilities in team management, or remove the stage and skill requirements by refining the estimates allocation for this work item."

My team has the SKILLS BA and BACKEND.

In order for me to fix the error, I need to assign the task to someone with that skillset.

My question is: Why do I need to do that? If I am planning a task for future sprints I am not necessary to know who is the team member that will work on that task, and select the team member from a list of 10 people is actually quite frustrating.

Am I doing something wrong?

Thanks,

Eduardo Moratto

 

[Andy Heinzer]

Portfolio is trying to help address common bottlenecks that teams get stuck on issues that they cannot complete and do so in the planning stage.  

Since your team doesn't have any members with the needed skill, there is no way that team could be expected to complete that specific task.   That is why you get this warning.   The solution should be either to adjust the team to include members that have that skill set (you don't need to know exactly who is going to work the issue now, but there needs to be at least one person on that team with that skill), or you would need to edit the issue/item in JIRA to remove this skill requirement altogether.   Otherwise you are setting up the team to be unable to complete that task, which is bad planning.

JIRA Portfolio Documentation: Learn stages and skills also explains how this can be configured.