Where do you record time in JIRA that is not part of a sprint?

Question

I will be planning my first project using Scrum.

I am still trying to get my head around JIRA and how I will use it.

I want to know that once we have identified a sprint (all tasks have been estimated with story point or hours/days), if a developer is unable to work on a task (i.e. they are working on a non-sprint task), where in JIRA do we record the time the developer has allocated to the non-sprint task.

I guess what I am asking is at the end of the sprint the burn down chat will show that the task has not been completed but how can I show management that this was a result of the developer working on another tasks?

Answer 1

If you are doing Scrum you do not need to record this time.

This is not really a Jira question, but one about Velocity and how you allocate resources to a Scrum team.

Scrum advises that you allocate team members fully to a given project. Of course, every team member has other duties and distractions. But Scrum assumes that amount of other work would be the roughly same for each sprint. These distractions will then be factored into the teams velocity.

In your case, if you lose a significant amount of your resources than normal (for example, team member moves to some other project or other unplanned activity), such that you won't be able to complete the commitment you have made for this sprint, then you should end the sprint as an abnormal termination.

Answer 2

In JIRA (and in Scrum more generally) the only work that will show in the burn down chart is the work that is included in the Sprint itself. So if an issue hasn't been assigned to a sprint, it won't show up in the burn down. Just keep the JIRA tasks that are non-sprint related out of the sprint and you shouldn't have a problem.

@Dave Hillier is correct that the time lost to other non-sprint tasks will, in effect, show in the burn down because if your developers are working on non-sprint issue they obviously won't be completing as much of the work that was added to the sprint. Again, as Dave points out, this should start to balance itself out after a while - you'll only add as many tasks to a sprint as you think your velocity allows for.

If your issue is with reporting back to management then it's fairly straightforward in JIRA to run a report on the tasks completed in the same time period as your sprint. You can compare this with the burn down to show how non-sprint work affects sprint work (basically, 'we fixed these 5 critical bugs last week - look at the dip in the burndown. If it's like this for the next 3 sprints I'll revise the velocity and change my estimated delivery date').

Answer 3

I guess what I am asking is at the end of the sprint the burn down chat will show that the task has not been completed but how can I show management that this was a result of the developer working on another tasks?

At the end of the sprint, what you want is in the Sprint Report. This report is available for completed sprints. It has the final burndown chart on top, followed by data for:

• Completed issues
• Issues not completed
• Issues completed outside of sprint <-- this is what you want
• Issues removed from sprint

The column info is fixed AFAIK, showing original estimate but not time logged on the ticket; but each section can be individually "viewed in Issue Navigator", where you can set the columns to include other fields of interest.

So, as long as all work is ticketed to make it visible, the sprint report will show management all the work that was completed during the sprint timebox.

Answer 4

Have you considered Rally to track time spend on various task either sprint or non sprint. You can add a Non-Sprint US in Rally with 0 point all team members can their task in that user story only. We use Jira, only for defect tracking and Rally for time and task traking. It seems double effort but it's very clear in terms of tracking and management perspective.