Understanding Jira issue types: A comprehensive guide
Atlassian’s Jira platforms offer many features that facilitate a project manager’s job. One example is Jira issue types – an essential tool for categorizing and managing tasks, ensuring software development progresses efficiently.
Learn more about Jira issues, their significance, and how they work together to build efficient project tracking and reporting practices. These procedures support improvements in collaboration and communication. Here’s how to put everything together.
What is an issue in Jira?
In Jira, an issue represents a task or activity a single developer or team must complete. Examples include project assignments, helpdesk tickets, or request forms. Issues capture vital information (e.g., assignees, task descriptions, and affected systems), helping users categorize and track work. This data offers the following benefits:
Transparency: Teams that track Jira issues better understand the various types of work they undertake, improving communication and cooperation.
Prioritization: Ranking issue types helps team members identify critical tasks so they can improve productivity and deliverable quality.
Reporting: Project managers use Jira issues to provide concrete evidence of progress to stakeholders. They illuminate the type and frequency of work the team completes, facilitating trend identification and informing decisions.
Jira issue types
Jira includes multiple issue types that project managers can use to identify, categorize, and differentiate tasks. These are the most common types:
Epics: A group of issues is collectively known as an epic. Epics may include different issue types, such as stories, tasks, or bugs.
Stories: Stories are used in agile software development to explain a feature of a software system from the user’s perspective.
Tasks: Developers use this catch-all term to classify work they cannot accurately represent with another issue type.
Bugs: A bug is a software problem or error that needs fixing.
Subtasks: Jira users break down complex tasks into smaller work units called subtasks to facilitate tracking and completion. Subtasks are sometimes called child issues.
Custom issue types
Administrators may add customized options to the Jira issue type list to meet their unique needs. Different types of issues are available depending on whether the team uses the Jira Software Management, Service Management, or Work Management platform. Here are some Jira issue type examples that can facilitate task tracking and data gathering:
Change
IT help
Incident
New feature
Problem
Service request
Support
Improvement
Test case
Spike
Technical debt
Research
Parent and child issue relationships
Jira uses “parent” and “child” to describe relationships and dependencies between issues.
Parent: A task made up of subtasks (aka children). The parent task’s delivery depends on completing each subtask.
Children: A subtask of the parent issue.
If the parent task is to develop a new website, child tasks would include the following:
Wireframe development
Graphic design
Backend programming
Copywriting
The team must complete each task to successfully deliver the website.
The parent/child relationship isn’t limited to standard issue types. Any issue can have a child (e.g., bugs and subbugs). The only exception is subtasks, which can’t become parents, as there isn’t another issue type below it in the hierarchy.
Understanding Jira issue hierarchy
Classifying tasks as parents and children is just one way to organize issues within the Jira hierarchy. Jira’s built-in hierarchy defines how each task fits into the broader workflow by placing it within a distinct level of the project’s scope.
Jira’s native hierarchy has three levels. From top to bottom, they are:
Epics: Undertakings with broad objectives that require the completion of numerous tasks, stories, or bugs.
Issues: Teams must complete stories and tasks to support the broader goal. Bugs are errors and problems that hamper progress or functionality. They require correction before epic delivery.
Subtasks: These smaller work units make up stories, tasks, and bugs.
Anatomy of a Jira issue
A Jira issue can capture a lot of information, including the following:
Assignee
Due date
Status
Category
Priority
Jira software stores this data within individual issue fields. Some fields are standard, whereas others are custom fields created by the administrator. All fields collect information that project management uses to report or track.
Including the correct information fields in an issue improves a team’s workflow and communication. Members know precisely which tasks to complete and in what order, boosting overall productivity.
Once the project manager has decided what information to include, adding it to the issue view is straightforward. Atlassian divides the Jira issue page layout into five standard regions. From the browser, an administrator configures fields to display useful and valuable data and decides where to locate them.
Here are the standard regions on a Jira issue page:
1. Description
This is the first place developers look for information. Jira issue type best practices recommend administrators include the most critical information here.
2. Field tabs
Field tabs reside at the top of the issue dashboard. Administrators use them to organize data relevant to different groups within the project team.
3. Context fields
Whenever an admin creates a custom field, Jira automatically assigns a context field they can pin above the “Details” box. This section allows them to select the default language and value and assign the issue types or projects where the custom field will appear.
4. More fields
Users find the “More Fields” section below the “Details” window on the dashboard. This area contains additional information that doesn’t impact the task’s workflow or delivery. If the fields remain empty, Jira hides them from view.
5. Configure issue layout
The “Configure” button allows users to rearrange the page layout and change a field’s visibility in the issue view. By editing the issue browser, the administrator can emphasize crucial information for the developers.
Managing Jira issue types with Tempo
Tempo offers many software solutions to help you oversee agile teams, regardless of issue or project type. Gantt Charts for Structure PPM uses real-time automation to keep your project plans and roadmap visualizations up to date for easy alignment.
Jira-enabled Timesheets is a time tracking and capacity management solution that uses cutting-edge AI tools to log, collect, and report on issue data with a few clicks. Project managers can gather insights into productivity using burn up charts and reports on time spent per issue.
Timesheets works hand-in-glove with Financial Manager, an application that monitors projects, epics, and portfolios to deliver real-time insights into costs, budgets, and profits, identifying trends and improving collaboration across the organization.
