Purpose

This is a lightweight getting started guide for our team while formalized training material is being developed.

Using the template

• Columns. The columns are designed to help you copy & paste this into JIRA. Labels map to the forms. To save space it made more sense to have a single column for the "Epic Name" and "Summary" because the "Epic" input form and the "Task" input form have different labels but it serves the same purpose, a short description. So if you see a / it means [Epic form label] / [Task or Milestone form label].

• Milestones. Just a name and a date. It is recommended to keep a separate list of milestones, add them here if you need to visually represent where in the schedule you intend to communicate something to your stakeholders. Notice, no epic link. When you get in JIRA your milestones will nicely be bundled in the view for "Issues without epics".

• Epic. These are your objects (deliverables). By the time you're filling out this table the list should be pretty solid.

• Task. As you work your outline into this format and start defining phases and estimates you may find yourself creating new tasks. It's assumed task lists will be elaborated during this part of the process as you dive into schedule planning activities (SDLC phase, estimates, due dates, people). The Epic Link column is there to really serve as a reminder to fill that out on the JIRA form. You could probably leave this as "Epic Name" to cut down the effort here. It's really just about the reminder to tie your tasks to the epic in JIRA.

• Orig Est. Notice the h for hours. Doing it here makes for more copy paste and less typing when you migrate into the form. If you don't include it then JIRA will default to minutes if you don't type the h.

Confluence Tips

Note the confluence table controls in the menu above. You'll want those row controls to add, remove, cut, copy, and paste. See https://confluence.atlassian.com/doc/tables-136463.html for full guide on features.

Open

if you get into the highlighting traps (e.g. trying to copy a table from one page to another), Confluence has some interesting quirks when it comes to table copies via highlighting. Here's somethings I discovered

• If you want to copy an entire table, place your cursor above at the line above the table and shift arrow down to highlight it. The line above the table appears to carry the metadata that defines it as a table. Highlight only the table and you'll just get text.

• If you want to capture multiple cells to say delete data, do a drag and click but start your mouse outside of the table. The cells will be highlighted in blue if you clicked right. Oddly, this doesn't carry color information, but don't worry about the colors. That just makes for easier reading.

• If you want to copy a row WITH the colors, click and highlight the row content INSIDE the table boundary. You won't see the blue highlighted cells, but it will get the color formatting information.