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Differentiating (User) Stories vs Features vs Bugs

Last post 12:05 pm June 27, 2017 by Gerd Bleher
1 reply
04:58 am June 25, 2017

How do you differentiate between designating issues in JIRAs as stories vs features vs bugs during sprint planning?


12:05 pm June 27, 2017

Why do you think it matters?

Technically speaking, the issue type in Jira determines the fields that are available. So if, for example, your Feature has a customer field but the Story has not, then you'd use Feature for issues where a link to a customer is necessary. The issue type also allows you to search for it in queries and filters. So if you have issues that are of interest for some then you might differentiate that with issue types (Stories are of interest to product owners and stakeholders, Tasks are of interest to the development team).

From a Scrum perspective it does not matter. A backlog contains work to be done. What is an appropriate way to capture the items depends on the organization, the tool, the application domain, the maturity, ...

Personally I would start small with as few item types as possible. Try it and improve it. Increase the number of issue types and their meaning if the need arises. Even then I would run experiments for a few sprints before rolling out a complicated classification and linkage system to an organization to assess whether it really solves the problem and does not create too many new ones. No matter how elaborated the classification and linkage system is, there will always be cases that are not handled properly, but at the same time you put burden on the frequent and simple cases. Then it's not worth going down this path.


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