JIRA Primer | Best Practices
- 1 Create a New Ticket
- 2 Writing an Effective Ticket
- 2.1 Guidance by Field
- 2.1.1 Issue Type Field
- 2.1.2 Summary Field
- 2.1.2.1 General guidelines for Summary
- 2.1.2.2 User Story Template
- 2.1.2.3 Bug Fix Template
- 2.1.3 Priority Field
- 2.1.4 Affects Version/s Field
- 2.1.5 Fix Version/s Field
- 2.1.6 Description Field
- 2.2 Examples of Effective JIRA Issues
- 2.1 Guidance by Field
Create a New Ticket
The Create Issue screen will be displayed.
Writing an Effective Ticket
JIRA tickets are submitted and reviewed by many different sources, including developers and customers. Writing effective tickets helps us better manage our backlog, aids in reporting of our product baselines, and enables automation of release notes.
Guidance by Field
Issue Type Field
DDF generally uses the following issue types. Choose the Issue type that best suits the issue.
Issues | Description |
|---|---|
| A problem which impairs or prevents the functions of the product. |
| A significant body of work that encompasses many user stories. |
| A new feature of the product. |
| A unit of work adding capability to the product. |
| A task that needs to be performed that does not impact the software baseline. |
| An enhancement to an existing feature. |
| A task involving software documentation. |
| A task that results from poor design choices or incomplete work. |
| Used for design, investigation, and prototyping to determine feasibility of design strategies. |
Issue type descriptions are also found at https://codice.atlassian.net/secure/ShowConstantsHelp.jspa?decorator=popup#IssueTypes.
Summary Field
The summary field is a high level description of the WHAT needs to be resolved. Consider your audience, the summary needs to clearly and succinctly detail the feature or issue from the user's perspective.
General guidelines for Summary
User Story Template
As a <type of user>, I need <some goal>, so that <some reason>
Bug Fix Template
<Symptom> due to <Cause> [, forcing user to <workaround>]
The summary appears automatically in the release notes and must follow this template
Do not write a bug against unreleased software, if the bug was introduced by another ticket that is not in a release, work the bug fix under that ticket number.
Use specific language to describe the bug (refer to the template above), do not use the word "bug" to describe the problem (i.e. "UI has a bug that stops it from loading")
Priority Field
Choose a priority based on the IMPACT of the issue, indicating the importance. Pay close attention to this field when creating Bug type issues.
Priority | Description |
|---|---|
| Blocks development and/or testing work, production could not run. |
| Crashes, loss of data, severe memory leak. |
| Major loss of function. |
| Minor loss of function, or other problem where easy workaround is present. |
| Cosmetic problem like misspelt words or misaligned text. |
Priority descriptions are also found at https://codice.atlassian.net/secure/ShowConstantsHelp.jspa?decorator=popup#PriorityLevels.
Affects Version/s Field
The Affects Version/s field indicates the version where the issues was observed or can be reproduced.
This is N/A for new epics, features, and user stories.
For bug fixes, select only a released version. For example, do not write a bug against 2.10.0 if it has not been released yet.
For bug fixes, only select a version if the bug actually manifests itself in that version; do not write a bug against 2.9.0 if the bug is not in 2.9.0.
Fix Version/s Field
The Fix Version/s field indicates the version in which the issue is resolved. For planning purposes, this field can indicate the version this issue is intended to be resolved by.
Description Field
The description field is a detailed, narrative description of the issue. General guidelines for the description field:
Examples of Effective JIRA Issues
Bugs
https://codice.atlassian.net/browse/DDF-2171