Using Quantified Tasks in your Issue Tracker

Quantified Tasks is a fairly new process, and is not officially supported by any task trackers that we are aware of. However, it is easy enough to integrate. Here's a few strategies to consider.

Task Types and Fields

In this document, a Task may refer to any single work item, including a Story, Issue, Bug, Feature, or Task. Each Task must support the following fields (more details later in article):

• Assignee,

• Impact (1-5 drop-down),

• Gravity (1-5 drop-down), likely maps to built-in Urgency/Priority field,

• Priority (1-5), likely maps to Status,

• Distance (1-5 drop-down),

• Friction (1-5 drop-down),

• Relativity (1-5 drop-down),

• Energy Points (numeric), likely maps to Story Points.

Issues (a.k.a. bugs) should additionally have the following fields:

• Origin (1-5 drop-down),

• Caught (1-5 drop-down),

• Volatility (numeric).

Subtasks rarely have any of the above.

Epics should only have the following:

• Impact (1-5 drop-down); optionally, you can call this Epic Impact if necessary,

• Gravity (1-5 drop-down).

Priority = Status

Priority maps to Kanban columns or the status field in most trackers. If you can edit the names of the statuses, we recommend using something like the following:

• Backlog (pT-p1). You may also hide these tasks from your board.

• Next Sprint (p2)

• Next/Selected for Development (p3)

• Now/In Progress (p4-p5)

• Done

You should add a flag or label for “Emergency (p5)” to call those Tasks out from the p4 Tasks in the Now column.

Impact

The Impact field should be a custom drop-down field, as Impact is distinct from Gravity (discussed below). Be sure to add this field to both Tasks and Epics.

If you like, you may define a separate Epic Impact field for Epics.

Gravity = Urgency/Priority

The "urgency" or "priority" field on most trackers maps to the concept of Gravity. (Yes, this is confusing until you're used to it.) If you can edit the names of the urgency or priority options, we recommend the following:

• g5: Highest/Critical

• g4: High

• g3: Medium

• g2: Low

• g1: Lowest/Trivial

• gT: (No Value)

If you're using Jira, you may already have five possible values under their "Priority" field that you can equate to Gravity scores.

Distance, Friction, and Relativity

If you have tags, labels, or custom fields, add the five values for each of these three measures. These should be added to Tasks, but not Epics.

If you cannot add custom fields, you should type out the full formula for your Energy Points at the top of each task description. For example, (d3 + f2) * r2 = 10 might appear in your description, while just 10 goes in the Story Points field.

• Jira, Trello, and Phorge/Phabricator (among others) have custom fields on tasks, so add fields for Distance, Friction, and Relativity.

• GitHub and GitLab (among others) support arbitrary labels. These should look like d3: Half Sprint or f4: Trail for easy reading and quick adding.

Energy Points <-> Story Points

The Energy Points score belongs in the Story Points field, which most trackers have. For example, Jira and Phorge have Story Points, while GitLab Premium has Weight.

Issue trackers with automation can be configured to calculate Energy Points automatically from Distance, Friction, and Relativity.

Stability Measures

Origin and Caught are best specified with custom fields, and Volatility with a custom numeric field. Barring this, include them in the description instead.

Automation can be used to auto-populate a custom numeric Volatility field from Origin, Caught, and Impact.

Tracker-Specific Patterns

Share Your Usage Patterns!

If you have any patterns you'd like to share, please comment!

Additionally, if you are a designer or developer on an issue tracker, and you add support for Quantified Tasks, let us know! We want to spread the word.

---