When should I make a JIRA issue?

• Non-trivial change to something such as code, data product or dashboard

• More than half a day of work

When shouldn’t I make a JIRA issue?

• Work doesn’t meet the above criteria, examples:

  • Simple data request

  • No code change

  • Less than half a day of work

What JIRA project should I use?

• Try to track all work in the DW Sprints board within the DSDW project.

• Exceptions for existing projects (CANVAS, TDLR, etc.)

• The DW Sprints boards runs on monthly sprints

How should work in JIRA be organized?

JIRA work should be organized using a combination of Epics, Tasks and Labels.

Epics

Epics can be used to define projects that will have multiple tickets. While an Epic isn’t necessary for one-off requests, an Epic is required for a ticket to appear in the Timeline view.

Open

In the case of one-off requests, if you find yourself creating tickets for a lot of data requests, it may make sense to create an Epic for it. You could also create an Epic for recurring administrative tasks for a service.

Before you create a Ticket (or an Epic), you should see if a relevant Epic already exists by looking here.
If you feel an Epic is needed that doesn’t exist, create one by clicking the Create button.

Open

Tasks

Tasks can be used to capture smaller units of work such as requests, bugs, or parts of a project. To create a task, click the Create button and fill out the form. Make sure to select a parent Epic (if needed) and provide a summary, description and assignee.

Once a ticket is created, you can assign to a sprint in the Backlog.

The Kanban view for the current sprint can be found under Active Sprints.

Try to avoid creating Sub-tasks within a tasks as these create clutter and make closing out sprints difficult when sub-tasks haven’t been completed within a ticket. As an alternative, use a to-do list inside the ticket.

Labels

Labels can be used to associate Tasks or Epics with services. A Task or Epic covering multiple services can have multiple labels.

How do I tie a ticket to GitHub?

1. Create a ticket

2. Begin branch names with the ticket key (e.g. dsdw-588, lowercase is preferred). You can also add additional metadata such the branch owner and description, separated by dashes (e.g canvas-874-etsur-show-multiple-nonsis-users).

3. In pull requests, paste the URL to the ticket in a comment when you open a pull request, this makes it easy to link back to the ticket when reviewing a pull request.
   
   

    

4. The JIRA-GitHub integration should pick up all commits, pull requests and builds associated with the that branch.
   
   

    

5. If GitHub activity from your repo isn’t being reflected in your JIRA ticket, reach out to Rob Piscitello and work with him to get your repo added to the GitHub-JIRA integration.