Taking my project to the next level.

[Daniel Caputi]

I am a Software Developer/Manager working for an engineering firm that manufactures hardware and does only a small amount of in-house software... until now.

I've been using Jira mostly as a database for bug tracking and a little organizing. I am not the PM nor does our PM pay much attention to the software effort... until now.

The PM recently asked me to provide the status of the current software heavy project in terms of Stories and Points (this request actually came from the customer. He actually has no clue of what he's asking). And as you may have guessed, I haven't been using Jira to create Stories, assign Points, create/execute Sprints and follow any formalized workflow.

I was hoping to retro-actively create a set of cards (Epics, Stories and Tasks) then fill in the story points, estimates and remaining time to bring my project to a state where I can generate some kind of useful report. I am not having much luck. The reports seem to require an actual data set having historical sprints and real progress.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to bring my Jira project to the next level?

[Summer Hogan · Accepted solution]

Hi @Daniel Caputi Welcome to the community! 

Just as an add on to what Kaylan and Trudy said above, since not possible to retroactively create historic sprint data, maybe for that you can use Confluence, if you have it, to create a project plan that can be historical. And for any upcoming work that remains to finish your project you can use Jira to create issues and sprints. Here is a link that explains the project plan template in Confluence if you decide to go that route: https://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence/templates/project-plan 

[Summer Hogan]

@Daniel Caputi - If Kaylan, Trudy and I helped you can you please accept our answers as that really helps us. Thanks! 

[Kalyan Sattaluri]

Welcome @Daniel Caputi 

What your PM is asking is,

• Have you decomposed the project into work/issues completely. ( From idea - delivery)
• Have you "sized" each of the work+/issues fully. (days/hours/points what have you)
• Of which, how much have you completed.
• Whats remaining.
• Based on mumbo/jumbo, when will it complete. **date**

so he can communicate how long it will take you to deliver.

Unfortunately, this may not be the forum for you to get that answer immediately unless you tell us where you are in the process.

[Daniel Caputi]

Our customer is now specifically asking for "planned vs. actual" numbers on the project. All I have to work from is the original estimates compared to the remaining and a start date that I will use to offset the completion date. But shouldn't that be enough?

The Epic Report has a giant graph at the top which is empty because all my cards were attached to the Epic on the same day - one week ago, when I started this post.

So, I'm looking for an alternative in the form of something like a custom dashboard or ad-hoc type query that simply sums up the Epic estimates and remaining work. 

Is this going to be possible? Maybe I need to export something and use excel.

[Daniel Caputi]

Thank you all for the quick and thoughtful responses! ... all good stuff/food for thought...

I was hoping there'd be some way to roll back the clock and add some retro-active data (can't help but think like a hacker!) ... but no worries, lessons learned. I'll start using sprints and track progress the way Jira was intended.

So, what I did when I got the request to "put my cards on the table" was to create an Epic for each of the main programs we're working on. Then went through the backlog and assigned each card to their corresponding epic and added a time estimate (for some reason the default was not points). I also set the remaining time to 0 on "done" cards. That gave me this glimmer of hope:

If Jira could do that, surely there ought to be a report that won't look like a flat line :(
(maybe someone can answer me that?)

I then sat down with my PM, he looked at all my cards and said "There's nothing here I can show the customer. None of these titles sound like user stories". Which is true for the most part, I have a lot of cards that breakdown the functionality of the code and divide up the work into tasks.

I expect this is my fork in the road - to stop writing and debugging code and spend my workday answering emails, attending meetings and working with Jira!

[Trudy Claspill]

w.r.t. time vs. Story points

You can change that setting by going to your board configuration and setting the Estimation Statistic.

w.r.t. getting a progress report for the epics that doesn't look like a flat line, take a look at the Epic Report and Epic Burndown available in the Reports menu. Those are available only for Company Managed projects.

https://support.atlassian.com/jira-software-cloud/docs/view-and-understand-the-epic-burndown-report/

https://support.atlassian.com/jira-software-cloud/docs/view-and-understand-the-epic-report/

[Trudy Claspill]

Hello @Daniel Caputi 

Welcome to the Atlassian community.

It is not possible to retroactively create historic sprint data. At this point all you can do is move forward with estimating work that remains and managing it in Sprints, if that is the chosen methodology.

I recommend that you first get a set of requirements concerning the information that the customer is going to want to get about the project, and then we can provide advice about how to achieve those requirements.

What does "the status of the project" actually mean? Do they want to know the total effort of the project, including work already completed, plus the remaining effort for work yet to be done?

How do they expect the data to be presented?

Do you actually need to manage the work in Sprints? Are the customers wanting to see data on what is scheduled to be completed, committed to be completed, and actually completed in Sprint-type timeboxes?

Story points are just a relative sizing estimation to tell you in general terms that one story takes more effort, less effort, or the same effort as another story. It is not intended to be directly correlate to the amount of time needed to complete the work. Will that meet the expectation?

Is there a need to create Epics and sub-tasks? How complex and extensive is the work?

Are timelines going to be needed?

Is this going to be a multi-release project? Or a big-bang release?