Jira Tickets

Writing a Good Title

A good title is written as a call to action that tells you the definition of done at first glance.

The Imperative Form

Consider writing your tickets in the imperative form.

Imperative statements are more succint and straight to the point.

Concise

  • "Do this"

Wordy

  • “Can you do this because so and so needs this or that?”

Imperative statements draw the reader to the action.

Okay, I'll fix the issue.

  • "Make this issue work as intended"

Yeah, the issue's not fixed. Now what?

  • "This issue is not working as intended"

Other Examples

Meh: Facebook One-Click Signup

Wordy: As a User, I should be able to log into by clicking a single button that has a Facebook integration

Nice: Implement Facebook One-Click Signup

For improvement or requests:

Meh: Time display does not show in proper format

Wordy: Customer X wants us to show the date in military time so that it remains uniform throughout their site

Nice: Fix time display to show in proper format

For Release Notes

Did you know that writing tickets this way also makes it easy to write Release Notes?

Tickets:

Add User Validation Refactor Endpoint connections to make them dynamic

Release Notes:

Added User Validation Refactored Endpoint connections to make them dynamic

Simply transition the title into the past tense and voila, you have your release notes.

Writing a Description

Begin with the User Story

The first line of any Jira ticket's description should be the user story.

User stories provide a detailed yet concise explanation of the ticket that can be read and understood by both technical and non-technical people. Putting it on the first line of the description will make the ticket easier to read and easier to summarize in Sprint updates or Releases.

The user story is divided into three parts: the User's Role, the desired Action/Feature, and the Reason/Context (as needed).

Acceptable User Stories:

  • Longer Version: As a user, I want to be able to view the order numbers in Standing Orders so that I can track my orders for the week.

  • Condensed Version: User can view order numbers in Standing Orders.