Plan vs. Reality? ❌Stop Relying on Issue Status and Dates❌

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More than a decade ago, Jeff Bezos was quoted as saying "Any plan won't survive its first encounter with reality. The reality will always be different. It will never be the plan." 

Or in the words of Mike Tyson, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”

Those of us with day jobs in software development might not have to worry about getting punched (hopefully), but we do need to be able to adapt our plans to the realities of our work. 

Jira provides the tools you need to map out a game plan, but once things are in motion, reality rarely matches up. Do all of your issues get picked up by the start date and completed by the end date? Are the requirements in each issue fully understood by contributors? Just how ‘in progress’ are issues that are In Progress? 

This is the problem. A plan kicks off, and then we spend countless hours tracking people down and calling for extra meetings to understand what is truly going on. We can’t rely on an issue’s dates and status to give us the full picture. And nobody has the capacity to click into every issue to figure out what’s at risk.

There’s got to be a better way. 

If we want to know what’s going on and where things are getting bogged down, what we really need to see is ACTIVITY.

• For software teams, true issue status is best identified by associated development activity. Did the developer create a branch? Have commits been made? Is there a pull request open?
• Or how about an issue with lots of chatter? More comments may mean something is not well defined. Are there questions needing clarification? Is that issue going to hit its deadline?
• Time logged, days since last status change, issues reverting in status… there’s all sorts of hidden activity data that can paint a picture and help us identify what needs attention. 

If you want to float like a butterfly and sting like a bee (sorry, I’m keeping the boxing references going), you need visibility into activity.

Plan and Adapt with a Unified Git + Jira Activity View

As fun as it is to complain about something without having a solution, I can thankfully offer one here. It’s called Team Insights for Jira, and it just launched into Preview. 

This free app provides a familiar Gannt chart view of epics and issues, but then enhances that view by ovelaying user activity from Jira (status changes, comments, time logged) and Git repositories (branches, commits, pull requests, tags). Users can filter by project, sprint, contributors, issue type, and more to drill down on the exact list of issues that matter to them. This comprehensive visualization enables Jira users to easily see how work is progressing against plan, and it’s based on real-time activity data.

With easy access to this data, every team member can clearly see what needs attention and make better decisions about what should be prioritized. And standups and retrospectives become exponentially more productive because teams can easily compare the plan to what was actually done. 

 Team Insights for Jira is free for use with Jira data (e.g. status changes, comments, time logged, etc.). For Git Integration for Jira users, git repository activity is automatically included in Team Insights for Jira without any additional setup. Not a customer? Try a free 30-day trial.