How long does it take you to complete the project? Answering this question isn’t always simple. Even if you do, you won’t anticipate all of the issues that may arise. Employees and employers that work remotely face additional difficulties. Such as a lack of communication and a loss of control. Because the task is completed without the supervisor’s constant support, business owners typically worry about missing deadlines. Jira provides various ready-to-use solutions in this area. Different teams have different working styles; we’ll look at how to estimate it using Jira time spent and story points, as well as which Atlassian technologies might assist.
Why do some teams love using story points (SPs)?
Some operations, such as the development of new features, cannot be timed to seconds. Time is a fickle thing. As a result, some teams opt for story points to measure productivity. They measure the effort needed in performance rather than forecasting how many hours or days they will spend on certain projects. For teams working with sprints, the SPs technique helps to plan the volume of work ahead of time. It’s ideal for agile planning. Furthermore, while the clock is not ticking, you have more flexibility and less pressure.
Employees assess a variety of aspects in story points:
- the job’s complexity
- the amount of work
- experience solving similar tasks
- potential risks, etc.
E.g., When adding a new button to many screens, updating the column headings may equal 1 story point, whereas a drop-down list will be correspondingly more difficult and equivalent to 3 SPs.
After a few sprints, you’ll have a fair understanding of the team’s velocity (how fast they complete work). It will rise in the future as your team members discover new ways to solve issues more rapidly. The Velocity chart is a unique report available in Jira. It displays the results of the last seven sprints. The grey bar shows the estimated planned work at the start of the sprint, while the green bar shows the total accomplished estimations at the end. Averaging all completed estimations yields a velocity estimate. You may plan your next sprint appropriately if you know your team completes an average of 120 SPs.
While some individuals enjoy using story points because of their adaptability and relevance, others may find the estimation of points to be difficult. Here are some of the SP’s flaws:
- Points are difficult to interpret: some teams just measure complexity – which is completely incorrect.
- It takes time to discover what your true velocity is.
- When a team’s sole motivation is to increase speed, quality suffers as a result.
However, the most common mistake is that most customers, managers, and stakeholders want to know when the project will be finished. Before they give you clearance, they’ll want a defined timeframe. As a result, you’ll need to convert points to hours for planning purposes.
Original time estimate and actual time spent features in Jira
If you prefer hours to take points, you’ll have to estimate how much time you’ll need to finish a problem – that is simple. The difficulty is, how will you determine how much time you have spent? Time tracking is one of the most used methods. Jira Software gives you the option to customize your estimates and tracking information. As a result, you should enter:
- The original time estimate – how long do you believe it will take to complete the project?
- Then log your time spent in 2w 3d 5h 30m format – (w) weeks, (d) days, (h) hours, and (m) minutes.
Jira managers frequently have trouble managing their team’s time — forcing employees to enter their working hours may be difficult. A remote team makes things much more challenging. Fortunately, there are additional options for keeping track of how much time Jira issues spend in status.
- You may use the built-in Jira Days in Column option if you use Classic boards. Only the amount of days an issue has been in the status will be displayed. The dots on the card represent this.
- Using custom fields and Jira automation, estimate the time in status. E.g., If you need to get the time spent from the start of a sprint to the “done” status, add a rule with an issue transitioned trigger and action with the calculation done by smart values.
- Discover more add-ons at the Atlassian Marketplace. Time in Status for Jira Cloud is an example of such a tool. It will assist you in automatically obtaining the time spent by employees in each status. You may get a variety of time reports in both table and graph formats.
You can compare the time your team expected to complete issues to the actual time-consuming using this information.
Story points & hours together?
Story points are still connected to time for some teams. They go so far as to try to equate SPs to hours. Two narrative points, for example, correspond to tasks that will take 2-4 hours to complete, whereas three story points correspond to issues that will take 4 to 8 hours to complete, etc. It’s a hybrid task estimating approach that shouldn’t be used in most instances. The team uses it to make the client’s estimating process go more smoothly.
Other teams can use story points to estimate the scope of work a team can achieve during a sprint while also keeping track of time spent. When evaluating the efforts of a group, it might be useful to compare:
- how many SPs an employee closed as original estimates
- how much time task has been spent in progress
It’s up to you to figure out which form of estimation your team needs. You can try one after another until you discover the Time in Status for Jira Cloud app that suits you best. Which approach does your group employ? Please share your thoughts with us.
