How to structure a project for a dev team and a manual testing team - best practice?

[Anagha Devi]

 We have a Jira project with a team of 8 developers and I am going to be the first tester in the team. The board and the project are established in a way to support the developers. 

We don't want to overcrowd the existing board, but wants to have all the testing workflows added in the project. 

1. Is there any way we can have two boards in the same project where, once a story is in the "Done' column in the Dev board, it appears automatically in the test team's board's 'Ready to Test' column?

2. We want to have the boards set up in a way that, testing team gets all the stories done by devs, and we decide about the testing capabilities. 

3. Is there any other best practice we can follow?

[Dam]

Hi @Anagha Devi 

1. Yes you can create as many boards as you want in a single project. You will have to improve the current workflow on the project to all your needed test status, and change the current "Done" status into something like "Done for dev". 
Then with Automation when a developer move the ticket to "Done for dev", the issue can transition automatically to "Ready to test" for example after a short period of time... 

2. Yes classic need ;) 

3. Normally in this case in bigger organization, there will be: 

• 1 project for dev, with a dev workflow, for a team of developers
• 1 project for test, with a test workflow, for a team of testers
• when issue in dev project is done > a new issue in the test project is automatically created and linked to the dev issue so that both teams can run independently with their own workflow and status, and also report on issues separately, and live on their own Agile rhythm and method. 

I hope it helps. 

Cheers,
Dam. 

[Anagha Devi]

Hi @Dam ,

Thanks for the reply!

Could you please explain if we create two projects, how can we get Jira to automatically create a testing ticket  once the initial dev ticket is "Done for dev"?

Regards,

Anagha

[Dam]

Hi @Anagha Devi 

There is 2 main possibilities to do that: 

1. You can use a postfunction in the dev workflow and create a linked issue when going to the "Done" or "Done for dev" or final status of the dev workflow. The doc about postfunction is here: 
   https://support.atlassian.com/jira-cloud-administration/docs/configure-advanced-issue-workflows/
2. If you don't have the necessary postfunction to create an issue then you can use Automation to create an issue on a transition: 
   https://support.atlassian.com/cloud-automation/docs/jira-automation-actions/#Create-issue

I hope this helps. 

Cheers,
Dam. 

[Benjamin]

Hi @Anagha Devi ,

It really depends on the agreed upon process or methodology with the developers. Are you working in agile or waterfall? Also, what tools management tools are you using?

 1. It is possible to have as many boards as you would like on a project? However, working together on a different board may be as helpful in this case. Having both the development and testing status in one board gives full insight of the entire story.

2. Deciding about the testing capabilities after a story is done may possibly be more reactionary...this may result in a larger queue. If possible, work with development to think through the testing capabilities before the story is complete.

3. As mention above, work together on the same board and develop what needs to be tested for the story before it completes. The value here is that there's one board to see progress and be ready to to test the story as soon as it comes in the queue.

Thanks,

Ben