What is the Purpose of the "Work Log " in Jira

[Deleted user]

We are using Agile Methodology and I would like to know what the purpose of the "Work log " is.

How would I use it and to what purpose ?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Accepted solution]

It's for users to log their actual efforts (as in a length of time spent) on the issue. You can then report on that to see what issues are chewing up your resources, how long things are taking to do, and generate/work with estimates based on time worked.

Might not be of any use to you in an Agile context.

[Karmandroid Singularity]

What do you mean by log work might not be any use in Agile context?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Agile has nothing to say about logging time spent working on things.

Most Agile practices need some measurement of estimates and how you're meeting them (or not), and you could use work logs as part of it, but mostly, they're not that useful.

In Kanban for example, you don't care how much work is logged on an issue because every card is the same size and it doesn't matter whether someone spends 5 minutes or 5 hours on it.  In Scrum, you estimate something, commit to doing it, using the estimate to judge what you can do in the sprint, and when it's done, it's done, you burn down that estimate.  Again, you don't care about the actual time logged on it directly.