Delivery status inconsistent

[Glenn A]

I see this is something that's come up a lot, but not sure if it's come up this way. If I select delivery status, in default vs simple, for issue count:

• Expected behavior:  I expect to see the status of the 'linked issue' (the epic on the team's jira queue), regardless of it having sub-tickets or not.
• Observed behavior: I actually see the status of a sub-ticket linked to the delivery ticket.

I DO NOT want to see the linked ticket's sub-ticket(s) status. I want to see the linked 'root' issue.

An example of what I am seeing. I have a JPD project linked to an Epic delivery ticket. The JPD issue status is 'TEAM BACKLOG." The delivery Epic status is "TO DO," and at the moment, only has 1 sub ticket, a task to create the TDD, which is "DONE." The team has not added more tasks/stories as it's not booked for delivery for another few months. BUT... JPD shows the status of the idea/project as "DONE" because the Epic's sub-ticket is "DONE." 

This is not helpful as it confuses stakeholders/execs when they look at JPD views and I have to explain its a limitation with Atlassian's tooling.

Is there a way to actually show just the 'root' linked delivery ticket status, do i need to create a work around of a dummy sub-ticket to drive the correct state in JPD, or is there another way?

Thanks!

[Nick Haller · Accepted solution]

Hi @Glenn A ,

As @Walter Buggenhout , the delivery status cannot be configured to what you are hoping. Might be worth sharing this feedback within JPD under the Give feedback tab.

As a workaround and for better visibility to your stakeholders, you could have an automation link the delivery / root ticket into a JPD hyperlink field - which will display the status. I tested with something like this:

1. WHEN: Issue Linked
   • Types: Polaris issue link
2. BRANCH rule / related issues
   • Type of related issues: Linked issues
   • Link types: Implements
3. THEN: Edit JPD hyperlink field w/

https://site_name.atlassian.net/browse/{{destinationIssue.issuelinks}}

The linked delivery would then appear within the JPD hyperlink field, and any transition to the delivery would also appear:

Otherwise, you could remove the automation part of this suggestion, and still use a hyperlink field to copy / paste the root issue for better visibility to stakeholders.

[Glenn A]

@Nick Haller , OOOFFF! That is a great idea! Don't mind if I do ;)

Thanks!

[Walter Buggenhout]

Hi @Glenn A,

I totally understand your point; however, the behaviour is not configurable.

Considering this situation as a given, it may not be a good idea to link delivery tickets to your idea when it is totally not ready to deliver yet (which seems to be the case in what you describe). You can e.g. customise the views you share with stakeholders and only add the delivery information to the ideas that your team is working on right now. For items further down the road, it might be less misleading and more correct to show them as items to be worked on next and later, but without the delivery status (since they are not supposed to be worked on right now anyway)

Hope this helps! 

[Glenn A]

thanks for chiming in, but not a viable workaround to not link until really ready to deliver... automation at idea status transition puts the root delivery epic onto the team's jira.

Transparency is king. If the tool has a limitation, then stakeholders and execs should be aware (and use this as they deem appropriate when Atlassian comes knocking for license renewal).

Cheers

[Walter Buggenhout]

Indeed, @Glenn A. I think I mentioned I understand your point. I also mentioned another workaround, which is to configure the JPD views you share with stakeholders to display information in such a way that the views themselves are relevant as well.

If you include delivery information about work that is currently not being delivered, that is not useful information for your stakeholders. It would be more valuable (if you are willing to share that information very early on) to share an approximate timeframe for future ideas rather than adding the delivery status. That information can be added right inside custom JPD views you can design yourself.

I would only share items with a delivery status overview for items where the delivery has actually started. That is done in this example, where the list is filtered by the idea status:

I honestly believe that - once your delivery has started - progress based on the actual work happening inside your linked epics is a lot more informative than the epic itself. That becomes even more so if you were to add multiple epics to deliver a single idea.

But again and agreed: it is not a configurable setting and it's good to be aware of it. So you'll need to make some design decisions to work with and around it. 

[Glenn A]

👍🏼