Project with subprojects

Hello,

Would you mind describing your scenario? I'll be happy to help. 

What is the difference between a task and an issue?

I think I would (intuitively) think of an issue as a description of the problem whereas a task should be a targeted solution to the problem (not the same). Does youtrack make a task just another type of issue?

I think? ... I want to be able to differentiate between a description of the problem and solution/s to that problem view them each from a different perspective. Then I want to be able to manage the completion of the solution/s (the "tasks"?) through a system of state changes (ready, in progress, testing, done). <-- something like that. The problem description paradigm is just something to look at / refer to as you work on the solution whereas the solving of the problem is where all the real activity occurs.

I can see an "Epic" as taking on the form of "problem description" and and a "User Story" taking on the form of something like "wishes and dreams on how the solution might work" and a "Task" as something like "targeted means by which to achieve the desired result". So in the end you have a progression like.. 'this is the problem' --> 'this is how I wish the solution would work' --> 'this is the way to make that solution work'. But that's just me. I don't know if that's a common way to look at it or if it's way off in left field.

Ok! Thanks a lot for your quick response. Another question regarding boards (development and management):

Epics that exist in Management Board should  appear in the Development Board?  What's the best approach?

It depends on how you configure your boards.

Please send me screenshots of the first two tabs of your board settings, 'General' and 'Columns and Rows' (for both Management and Development boards), and also please clarify where and how you use Epics on your boards.

Thank you!

The setup of my board regardings Epics/User Stories/Tasks is ok for Development and Management Board (as i read in Getting Started, followed the same logic). I just got confused with Sprints and Backlog. Let me explain below please.

I have several projects that i want to manage and they belong to a top level Project.What i am trying to do is to have a single Development Board for each Project and one Management Board where they are going to be the Epics. Every development board contains user stories and tasks. 

Now, for every board the Sprint is going to be common, am i right?
Let's say we have two boards, "A" and "B" for development and one for Management "M".
Board named "B" is not going to be aware of stories and tasks of board "A", except i got it wrong. Also this board won't contain anything regarding epics of Management board. Maybe my problem is with backlog queries and how to link boards with sprints. 

Can you help me? 
Thanks a lot

Uploading some screenshots. 

Could you please create a support request, so we won't expose the details of the settings in your project? https://youtrack-support.jetbrains.com/hc/en-us/requests/new?ticket_form_id=66282 Please provide there screenshots of your settings.

This sounds rather like the situation I now find myself in so I am interested in hearing what the suggested workflow was.  

I am new to YouTrack.  We have a large project, partially planned that we expect to take several months to complete.  The work can be cut up into stages.  It will involve a few dozen people who currently work as several distinct teams based on their general technical area (software, electronic hardware, mechanical, etc).  Most of the work (at least at the task or ~<4 ideal week story size level) could be separated quite easily by team or the task level work could be.  

How can the top level priorities, that is to say the order of Epics and Stories in the "top level project" view be reflected in "sub-projects" for the team?  From playing around with the tool for a while I came up with: Single project, tag issues based on team or discipline, generate work-boards filtered by discipline.  It could be filtered by something else but we feel some filtering is needed as organising the work for 30+ people in one go from one large work-board feels like it would be unmanageable.  

If we went for per-discipline projects instead.  Would there be a way or relating those back to the high level Epics and ensuring that changes to the backlog priorities were reflected?  

Hello,

Sorry for the delay. 

Could you please create a support request, so we won't expose the details of the settings in your project? https://youtrack-support.jetbrains.com/hc/en-us/requests/new?ticket_form_id=66282 Please provide there screenshots of your settings. 

Linking the stories, epics and tasks can be implemented via our link mechanism (please refer to https://www.jetbrains.com/help/youtrack/incloud/Link-Issues.html; you can also create your custom link types). 

I understand why people are being told to open a support ticket but the end result is that those of us who have this question are no longer able to see an answer. Its a little disappointing really.

I'm trying to understand both youtrack as well as certain concepts in project management that have been ambiguous to me. I'm not sure if this is the place to ask that or not. I do (will) have questions about the best way/s to use youtrack for my scenario/s but for right now I often find myself having to 'step-back' and address core concepts I'm confused about. For example..

 - What is the functional difference between an issue and a task (both conceptually as well as how implemented in youtrack)?

 - What is time tracking (in youtrack) come from? Is it coming from tasks? From issues? From both? What are the basis?

 - Is it correct that youtrack has both the sets (issues as well as sub-issues) ~ and ~ (tasks as well as sub-tasks)? In other words 4 total things that have the same paralell where there is the thing as well as the "sub" thing (task or issue)? Or is that wrong?

 - If the above is correct, then how are sub "things" supposed to be used that makes sense? In other words what is the use case to use a "sub" anything? What is the use case to use a sub-issue? What is the use case to ;use a sub-task? For example, how does a sub-task relate to an issue, how does a sub-issue relate to a task (the crossover), how does a sub-issue relate to a sub-task or an issue relate to a task (the parallel) ?

 - And other similar core concepts but as concretely applied to youtrack implementation of it. I'm asking mostly about connections between concepts here as much as defining the concept itself. Defining the concepts themself is what everyone does all over the Internet - no one puts them together and exposes how the stuff is related to one another and how to use them together.  And then there's the: how does youtrack do it component too?

I can only try to make sense out of ethereal project management concepts without concrete ideas to attach them to for so long before I drive myself insane trying to understand. I need real life implementation and procedure across the board (not 10 different options of how to solve the same problem but single options how to solve all the problem). How is all this stuff matter-of-factly done --> together?

Thanks for entertaining these crazy questions. I hope you can clear up some of my confusion.

Hello,

Thank you for detailed explanations. 

In YouTrack, we have issues. Issue is a basic YouTrack entity which can have title, description and a set of custom fields (like state, type, priority, assignee, etc). The thing is, you can fully define your own process and configure Youtrack to match this process. 

1. Custom fields are defined per project. You can select a set of fields (you can also create your own ones) to attach them to the project. Each field has a set of values (or just an input string). Consider custom fields as issue properties. For example, the Type field may have several values: Bug, Task, Feature, User Story, Epic (you can add your own values). That means you will define the type of your issue by selecting the type value. You can select issue's priority, state, other properties the same way. Please refer to https://www.jetbrains.com/help/youtrack/standalone/Reporting-an-Issue.html to find more details about issues and their fields. 
Answering your question - each task is an issue. An issue, in its turn, can be of task type. 

2. Time tracking is a combination of estimations and spent times. When time tracking is enabled for a project, each issue of this project is supposed to have estimation and spent times. Estimation may be defined during the planning phase while spent time is being added during the whole issue lifecycle. To log a piece of work, one has to add a work item (that is basically a piece of work which contains author, date, work duration, a comment). The full issue's spent time value is calculated as a sum of all issue's work items. You can build a time report to track progress and see the whole picture. Please refer to https://www.jetbrains.com/help/youtrack/standalone/Time-Management-Tutorial.html and https://www.jetbrains.com/help/youtrack/standalone/Time-Report.html to learn more. 

3. An issue can be linked with other issues using links. There are several predefined types of links, including parent one. You can add your types of links as well. Adding issues with parent links will help to imitate subtasks - you will have parent and children issues, the whole tree view can be observed on the issues list. Links can be used for the decomposition of a big user story to smaller tasks. Please refer to https://www.jetbrains.com/help/youtrack/standalone/Link-Issues.html and https://www.jetbrains.com/help/youtrack/standalone/Customize-the-Issue-List.html to get more details. 

Basically, a full issue lifecycle may look as follows:
1. Create an issue with type "User story", describe the main idea in summary: let it be "Plan vacation". Put it in "Open" state. 
2. Create an issue with type "Task", describe the idea of a smaller task, e.g. "Apply for a visa". Put it in "Open" state.
3. Link the second issue as a subtask of the first issue. 
5. Put the second issue in "In Progress" state
5. Log spent time to the second issue, e.g. create a work item with "Filled in the form" comment and 2 hours duration.
6. Put the second issue in "Done" state
7. etc. 

It is almost impossible to describe all possible scenarios. Besides customization possibilities, you can configure integrations with VCS, build servers, mailbox, etc. You can set up different automations to extend Youtrack possibilities (https://www.jetbrains.com/help/youtrack/standalone/Workflow-Guide.html).

I hope that helps. Please let me know if you have any questions.