What is the difference between Story Point Estimate, Time Estimate and Time Tracking?

[Michael Reinhardt]

Is Story Point only for Stories?

Which of the above is more in line similar with a WBS in MS Project?

How should we differentiate between time for development, pre-testing, testing, deployment, UAT? etc.

[Dave Theodore [Coyote Creek Consulting]]

Jira is an issue tracker, not a project management system. It has many features that allow you to manage projects with it, but it doesn't have all the project management capability of MS Project. 

Story Points come enabled only on Story and Epic issue types by default.  You can change this, but it wouldn't be textbook Agile if you change this behavior. Story Points are an abstract measure of effort used to estimate the "size" of a User Story. The intent is to be able to get agreement of the size and scope of the Story without factoring in experience and competence needed to complete the task. If you use time for this purpose, you will have as many estimates as people you ask, hence the use of an abstract method of effort in Agile.

Based on this small window in to your process, it sounds a lot like you are trying to use an Agile tool to manage a Waterfall process.  I think you will have better results if you embrace the Agile paradigm and manage your projects in an Agile-like manner. This will mean ditching MS Project and making use of the Agile functionality and reporting natively in Jira, and possibly with some 3rd party Apps in order to visualize and communicate your project status. 

[Manali Butey]

Hi @Dave Theodore [Coyote Creek Consulting] 

We are currently in design phase using Jira Epics and Task issuetypes to map our WSB and Gantt and visualising it using the Structure and Structure.gantt plugin.
The team now wants to understand resource capacity using Jira for this phase. I am thinking of turning on time tracking so hey can put in the estimates and then we can draw from Jira resource usage and do capacity planning. 
My concern is that when I  begin implementation at which point I'd like to use story point to estimate the complexity /effort required to complete the Story, and as a flow through from the design phase, I use time tracking then in your opinion will I be able to make a strong distinction between using story point to define complexity/effort and use time tracking to define resource usage?
I am new to this and hence cant foresee what could go wrong or if I am missing anything.

P.S.: we will be using the Epic -> Feature -> Story -> Task hierarchy in implementation phase. Should I have story point estimated at all levels?

Appreciate your input on this.

Thanks

[Dave Theodore [Coyote Creek Consulting]]

Jira is designed to use an abstract measure of effort and also time tracking simultaneously.  The important thing is to understand the distinction and not allow the line to be blurred between the two measures.  For example, you wouldn't want to go down the path of equating time to Story Points to time (say, for example "8 hours = 1 Story Point.") If you do that, you will no longer have the benefit of an abstract measure of effort to seek agreement on.  If you can get comfortable with the idea of standardizing on Story Points, it is possible  to do your resource planning with only this measure of effort.  Do some reading on "velocity" and you will see how it works.  Jira will calculate your velocity after you have done 3 Sprints, so that might save you some headaches.  If you do want to go down the road of capturing time estimates and burn them down, you will need to ensure that teams still use Story Points or your reports will not be accurate.  You should also add a post-function in your workflows so that transitions that go to "Done," "Closed" or whatever the last status in your workflow is set your "remaining estimate" to "0h." If you don't, you will have closed issues and leave Jira thinking that there is more work to be done, which can mess up your reporting. I think you will be fine if you don't try and equate time to Story Points, though.

Why have "Feature?" Is this to capture the concept of something new before it's fully baked and ready for development? If so, it would be better to capture this elsewhere.  The Epic will automatically calculate the sum of Story Points associated  with it. You don't need to estimate the Epic.  You would add Story Points to your Stories.  Jira's reporting works best if you just use the Epic/Story relationship.