Transition Naming Convention

[Andrej Had]

What is best practice for naming transitions.

I can see three approaches.

1. Next Status Name
   Transition is named according to next status.
   
   if issue is in status Implementing and next status is Testing, The transition's name is Testing
   
   
2. According to past Action
   
   Transition is named according to verb explaining how to finish actual status.
   
   if issue is in status Implementing and next status is Testing. Next transition's name is
   Implemented
   
   
3. According to next Action
   
   Transition is named according to verb explaining next transition.
   
   if issue is in status Implementing and next status is Testing. Next transition's name is
   To Testing

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Accepted solution]

Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

I find the most intuitive one for most of my clients is a mix of all three of those.  Sometimes the target status name is good for describing the transition into it, but quite often the best name is a verb-like name, something that describes an action that your users intuitively grasp what the issue is going to end up looking like in its new status.

For your example, I don't think option 1 is a good descriptor, it does not imply a change, it looks like a setting. 

Option 2 is good in the sense that a user would say "yep, we've implemented this, so it needs to move on" (but I would question why you would be testing after an implementation, I think you'd want something more like "deployed to test server", unless your process is not what I'm guessing it is)

I think the third one is your best option here - something that sounds like an action the user is going to take - "send to test", "to testing" or even "ready to test" would work.

The other example I'd look at is the case where the user doesn't actually care or particularly understand what the target status is.  If, for example, you have an end status of "Closed", then the transition would make perfect sense if it were named "Done", "Close", "Closed", "Complete" and so on.

I would recommend being consistent though, as you imply - if you go with an action name scheme, do it in every workflow.  If you go with just status names, use status names everywhere.

[James K. Cope]

Relocated by me so it is a suggested answer. It would be nice if I could delete my own comments here. :)

[James K. Cope]

Allow me to elaborate on what I use as a "best practice" for naming transitions in the instances I've managed. The user community (a.k.a, my customer or boss) has always been 100% satisfied when I changed transitions names to VERB actions.

For example, if an issue is "In Progress" and is going to transition to "Queued for Review," the transition is named "Queue for Review" or "Submit for Review" -- and it becomes very clear what the Current User is doing next.

This same naming convention holds true for non-transition actions under the Actions pull down (in cloud, anyway). I've had projects where comments and editing were actually locked down for a project because all communication and field updates were restricted to the workflow. If the user wanted to add a comment, update a field, etc. those actions would be named "Add Comment" or "Update Job Number" -- so, again, it becomes very clear what the Current User is doing next.

In full disclosure, I wish this had been my original idea, but I actually adopted it after being thrown in the deep end of the Jira pool after a layoff at a company I worked for left the admin position open. I was asked to ramp up very quickly to fill the role with 1/3 of my time and, loving process management, I jumped at the chance, watching several tutorials on YouTube that weekend. One of the first episodes I watched emphasized using VERBS for transition names so they would be easily discernable from status names.

That's my two (or ten?) cents on the subject!