Jira

About Jira

CivicActions uses Jira for many project management, work tracking and ticketing purposes, especially for larger projects. Jira has enormous potential for integration with other tools, and works well with scrum, kanban and other agile methodologies. Compared to Trello, Jira is a more full-featured and complex way of tracking work.

An overview originally created for GlobalNET may be helpful: https://docs.google.com/a/civicactions.com/document/d/1euq7kh4M6J9-orOvOV2Aip_4IpfK35tGZvEfg1pvJrU/edit#heading=h.uaxvznm9nabz

Typically the Project Manager will take primary responsibility for creating and/or updating Jira project boards, and will help keep track of ticket progress. However, each person on a team is expected to be responsible for updating their own tickets. In general, all aspects of sprint planning are best shared by the team, and should involve group cooperation.

Plan / Work / Report modes

Jira has Plan, Work and Report modes, which do more or less what they sound like:

  • Plan mode is for prioritizing tickets and organizing sprints ahead of time.
  • Work mode is for progress during a sprint, for instance moving a ticket from "To Do" to "In Progress" to "Code Review", etc.
  • Report mode is for tracking progress and results with a variety of reporting options.

The Project Manager's role in Jira

Project Managers start and end sprints, help keep track of overall workloads and ticket priorities, and usually keep close track of which tickets are blocked or unattended.

Project managers at CivicActions typically become very proficient in Jira.

The engineer's role in Jira

Engineers and other staff who work on Jira must keep track of the tickets assigned to them, and make sure to update them appropriately as work takes place.

Different projects may have different working protocols for estimating and updating tickets.

As with many other aspects of our work together, overcommunication is always better than undercommunication.

Tracking time & using estimates with Jira

We use a Harvest integration that allows you to track time spent on a ticket from within the Jira ticket itself.

Most tickets will benefit from careful estimates of how much work/time is involved. Project managers and engineers will decide this during grooming and/or sprint planning.

Other resources: