Is it possible to group acceptance-criteria which are specified for the same column of a board?

[ned_saf]

I think that it would be a very useful thing to have the opportunity to group acceptance-criteria for a ticket (i.e. issue) in board, not only based on the column of the board in which the ticket (i.e. issue) is located in, but also based on some team-specific agreement. 

For example, least say that you have a board which contains columns "In specification", "POC", "MVP", "Production", "Handover". Let's then concentrate on the acceptance-criteria which you would to specify as mandatory tasks that should be finished before being able to move a ticket (i.e. issue) from the column "In specification" to the column "POC".

Let's say that the acceptance-criteria which we want a ticket (i.e. issues) to have while in the column "In specification" are written and grouped as following:

Problem-understanding acceptance-criteria:

• 10 examples of how the problem is solved without the requested solution (which is an app)
• 10 examples of how the problem should be solved with the requested solution
• what should the POC solution for the request look like
• what is the minimal solution which would start bringing business value (i.e. what is the MVP)

Data acceptance-criteria:

• link to data sources
• contact of responsible for maintenance of datasets
• permissions for accessing data
• ...

Business-side acceptance-criteria:

• requestors of the app/use-case are defined
• business-valuation created
• contact of collogue who will do promo videos

I think that the grouping which is done in the above example would largely help the person working on a ticket (i.e. issue) to organize meetings with requestors of apps/use-cases. If the acceptance-criteria was not grouped as mentioned above, and all the acceptance-criteria were just show together, it would be harder to think of an agenda for meeting(s) which you would have with requestors of apps/use-cases.

I am not a Jira expert, so something like this might already exists, but that I am not aware of it. If so, please let me know how to make this possible. 

[ned_saf]

I found a similar question to the one I asked, but it still does not give me the answer that I was looking for: https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Jira-questions/Entry-and-exit-criteria-in-columns/qaq-p/778858

[John Funk]

Hi Ned (and Iub)

This will probably not be easy to accomplish out of the box with Jira as such. However, here's a though. Have another custom single select dropdown with Acceptance Criteria values - something short and brief that represents the bigger set of items. Maybe like Data, Business, etc. 

Then you could have an automation rule that populates the Acceptance Field with the information you have above for those types of Acceptance Criteria. 

Then you could create a Dashboard with a Two Dimensional gadget based on Status and the custom dropdown field. That will will you a count of the intersection of those values so you would know there are 2 Data acceptance criteria in POC, 3 Business acceptance criteria in MVP, etc. 

Would that solve it for you? 

[ned_saf]

Hey John, 

Thank you for your answer, but I have to be honest and say that such a solution sounds as too complex for something which could be easily implemented (or maybe I just lack the understanding of Jira). 

Maybe it would even work, but I am not a Jira expert, and I don't know how to do many things which you mentioned. For starters, I don't know how to make a custom dropdown field which would appear when I am creating a ticket (i.e. issue). Secondly, I had no idea that there is a feature in JIra which acts as a Dashboard, and that there is something called Two Dimensional gadget (I have no idea what that even refers to, even logically).

I assume that your answer is suggesting to make a table-like representation, except that unlike a standard table, this structure would be centred around its columns, and each column could have a different number of rows. The columns of the 'table' would have the same names as the names of the lanes/columns from the Jira board, and that in each of them there would be a list of acceptance-criteria which is specific for the column of the Jira board which has the same name. 

If the above explanation aligns with what you suggested using a more Jira-specific language, I would say that it would be an okay workaround. However, I still don't get two things:

1. Would this 'table'-like representation be directly connected to the board (i.e. would I have to explicitly open it somewhere, or is it visible in the same window as the Jira board), and would it be visible when displaying a single ticket (i.e. issue)? One of the purposes of the acceptance-criteria in the first place is to be a reminder to the end-user about what he/she should do. If it is not visible in the board and/or the ticket (i.e. issue), I could simply create a file in Word, or Excel, or any other app, and open it independently.  
2. Is the workaround able to stop the end-user from moving a ticket (i.e. issue) from one column/lane (ui.e. to change it's status) even if the acceptance-criteria is not met? Another idea of acceptance-criteria is to ask from the end-user to explicitly check the acceptance-criteria and thick the checkboxes next to them before being able to move them to the next column/lane. This way, you are avoiding the situations where users of the board would be able to say "I didn't know I had to do it", "I forgot about it", "I thought we agreed that we do not do that any more", ...

[John Funk]

Columns on a board are based on Statuses mapped to the columns. If you have multiple statuses mapped to a single column, then my idea would be a little trickier. 

But all in all, it's not very complicated what I have proposed. And if you want to learn Jira, it would be a good exercise to walk through to see what it produces. 

Give it a try and if you run into questions or need help, just post it back here. 

[John Funk]

Your number 2 above is a whole different requirement. How are you determining if the Acceptance Criteria was met? You can certainly put conditions or validators on transitions going to statuses to ask questions or check things. But they can't really know if the user has actually met the acceptance criteria. 

[ned_saf]

It is not that I just say that I have no idea about the terminogly which you are using, I of course did my reserach when I read your answer, and tried to figure it out how the solution would look like.

However, I was unable to find the building-blocks like “dashboard” and “gadget”, and I assume that kne of the following is the reason for that:

- my organisation is using the legacy (i.e. old) version of Jira

- maybe my organisation made the building-blocks unavailable in Jira gor their users (for example, I am sure of the fact that making custom fields, workflows, and schemas, was disabled by my organisation)

[John Funk]

Are they using Server or Data Center version? You should still be able to see Dashboards. Here is a link to more information about those. 

https://confluence.atlassian.com/adminjiraserver/managing-dashboards-938847879.html

So, you are not a Jira Admin? 

[ned_saf]

Thnak you for providing the link, but I unfortunately don’t see the dashboard option at all.

For context, the company uses the server version of Jira, and I am not the admin of Jira an the level of th whole organisation (I am just an admin of a Jira-project that my team is working on).

[John Funk]

That's crazy if they have hidden Dashboards from you. You should definitely ask about that. 

[ned_saf]

I checked with them today, and dashboards are disabled for us…

So, the proposed solution would unfortunatley not work for me and my team.