How to handle work progress with subtask

[Mauro De Feo]

Hello team,

as system integrators we support an OTT application in the media market where the app is available on SmartTV platform and for an increasing list of vendors (e.g. LG / Samsung / Philips, etc.).

Can you suggest us which is the best way for handling this scenario considering that the application from a tech perspective is the same code baseline for all the vendors, except for minor differences due to platform limitations or operating system requirements.

Our goal would be to track progress of work executed for each vendor in a sprint (2 weeks long), where usually the same feature/fix need to be implemented for all the vendors but as mentioned before it also happens that the work gets not executed in parallel or some bugs are affecting only a restricted list of vendors.

So far we are handling this use case with a dedicate Jira ticket (e.g. New Feature or Bug Type) with a specific component value to identify the vendor (e.g. LG / Samsung). And all of those tickets are linked to a specific "Epic" to make reports about the work done about that epic on all the vendors.

Unfortunately this approach is becoming hard to handle due to the amount of tickets to be handled at the same time (e.g. most of the time we have to duplicate the same ticket/bug for all the vendors).

We were thinking about using Sub-tasks approach (so one main Jira ticket with component "SmartTV" and one ticket for each vendor "LG"/ "Samsung"/ etc. but as far I can see, subTasks cannot be linked to a epic so we would lose the ability to generate accurate reports to track the progress.

Any suggestions here?

Thanks and regards,

Mauro.

Please find below our Jira setup:

- Jira version: v.7.6.0

- Build Number: 76001

- Installation type: Standalone

[Marc - Devoteam]

Hi @Mauro De Feo 

Welcome to the community.

Use a sub-taks per vendor or multiple vendors, linked to you feature or bug.

This will keep track of the progress in the feature or bug and as these are linked to the Epic, you will keep in track of the progress as a whole.

[Mauro De Feo]

Hi @Marc - Devoteam ,

thanks for your feedback, unfortunately If I got properly your suggestion I think that following your approach I would lose the possibility to track the work progress for a specific vendor.

Let me formulate a quick example to help understand our issue and goal.

Let's imagine our customer expresses a new feature which needs to be implemented for the application on SmartTV platform.

What we do is to track the feature in Jira ticket with type "New Feature" and tagging it as component "SmartTV". In addition to that we also create a new "epic" entity and we assign the new ticket to that epic. The usage of the "epic" is to collect all the tickets related to that functionality, including bugs or enhancements managed in a later stage.

Then, let's imagine that the required work for implementing that feature on SmartTV platform is 1 sprint (e.g 2 weeks in total).

So we plan the activity in the next available sprint and before the sprint begins we create a SubTask for each vendor (e.g LG, Samsung, etc.). So just to recap:

• Sprint A
  •  Jira ticket ("New Feature") with component "SmartTV" and linked to epic "Feature epic".
  • One SubTask for each vendor (e.g. LG SubTask, Samsung SubTask, etc.).

Once the sprint ends, the implementation is complete we provide the application version to the customer which is charge of doing a final validation on the development.

Now, let's imagine that the implementation gets approved on all the vendors except for one of them (e.g. on LG is failing due to a bug caused by the interaction with the O.S).

While we plan the required work to manage the bug raised, our customer could also decide to release the new feature to production (to end users) on all the other vendors  where the implementation has been approved.

Following this scenario, we would have some limitations in reporting and tracking the work executed to handle the functionality. For instance, the epic we created for that cannot be put to DONE (closed) as the functionality is available only on a limited number of vendors. At the same time, if we leave the epic IN PROGRESS, it's not possible to highlight that the feature linked to that epic has been already approved and released on some vendors.

What we would like to understand is how to track/monitor work executed to handle a specific feature on the SmartTV platform but at the same time to have a drill-down for specific vendors (e.g. LG / Samsung, etc.).

Thanks,
Mauro.

[Danut M _StonikByte_]

Hi @Mauro De Feo,

Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

If I understood correctly, you current hierarchy is the following:  

-> Feature Epic

-----> New feature (with component like SmartTV)

----------> Sub-Task vendor A

----------> Sub-Task vendor B

To me the hierarchy looks correct. It might be good to add a field to the sub-tasks that represents the vendor - a drop-down single selector that will allow you to select the vendor. This would help you with the reporting and filtering. 

What you miss, I think, is a good way to visualize the work breakdown and the status of the items.

In my opinion, Jira's out of the box tools are not sufficient to effectively track all of these. My advice is to search for a plugin on Atlassian Marketplace that offers better reporting features.

If you consider the idea of using a plugin, our Great Gadgets app offers two dashboard gadgets that can be very useful for your use case:

Work Breakdown Structure gadget displays the issues from a filter or JQL in a tree structure Epics > Features, Bug, Task > Sub-tasks along with their status.

This will allow you to quickly visualize the progress at epic or feature level.

 Pivot Table & Pivot Chart gadget - this gadget allows you to display all kind of multidimensional statistics (splitting/grouping data by multiple fields like Epic, Type, Components, Vendor, etc) and displaying them in form of tables, heat-map tables or charts of various types by using drag & drop just like in Excel.

This one can be really useful to see measure the completion at the vendor level. 

See also this article: https://community.atlassian.com/t5/App-Central-articles/How-to-display-the-progress-of-Epics-or-Initiatives-in-Jira-or/ba-p/2858840 

If you need help in configuring these gadgets, or maybe a short demo, feel free to contact us at support@stonikbyte.com.

Danut.