How to structure a project for a dev team and a user acceptance testing team - best practice?

[Anar Chipur]

We have a Jira project with a team of 8 developers and one Jira board "Dev-Board". We also have a group of 10+ experienced users who are willing to help by doing some user acceptance testing - they will test our application releases from the user perspective. So, we would like to include those testers into our project work in Jira in such a way that they can test specified user test cases and report bugs to the developers.

Which is "best practice" with Jira for integrating the testers in our project work without overloading the current board with too many people? 

For example, I am thinking of creating a second jira board "Test-Board" within the same project containing only issues of type "Test" for the group of the testers. The bugs related to the test cases will be linked to these test cases and assigned to developers. The developers should be able to see the bugs in the "Dev-Board" solve them and assign them back for a review (jira workflow status REVIEW) to the tester.

Would this be the right solution? Is there a best practice for this use case in Jira?

[Joy RK]

Hi, do you have a screenshot of your board and the workflow of your project?
I don't think you need to add more complexity by creating a new  separate board.

• You may want to reconfigure your board, specifically the columns of the board. For example if your workflow includes a "Awaiting User Acceptance" or "In Review", you can create add a column in your board for this status. This way everyone can use the same board to visualise the progression of the stories.
• If you want to be able to track the user acceptance as a separate ticket; you can use subtasks that can be assigned to the User required for the acceptance.
  
  • You can use a jira automation to transition the main story on completion of the subtask
  • ensure that your board query is not configured to filter out sub-tasks.

Hope this helps.

[Anar Chipur]

Thank you Joy RK,

if I could avoid complexity this would be great. I think, since the testers have their own stories of type "Test" they are independent of the development and can run the same workflow, from NEW to RESOLVED. The only exchange between testers and developers happens when a tester reports a bug - this bug then goes to a developer; the developer solves it and gives it back to the tester for a review.   

Here the workflow:

[Joy RK]

The only exchange between testers and developers happens when a tester reports a bug - this bug then goes to a developer; the developer solves it and gives it back to the tester for a review. 

Here's my thoughts (based on the available info) :)

1. A bug is a new story (type = "Defect")
2. This should ideally be in the backlog and follow the path: New --> To Do  --> In Progress --> Review
3. When the status of the ticket is at Review; the tester can then do their test: 
   • If you have a "Test story" created and linked for every defect, this story has to be resolved before the  defect ticket can be transitioned to Resolved.
     New --> To Do  --> In Progress --> Resolved

• • if the bug still persists: then Test story does not transition to Resolved but to "Review" 
    New --> To Do  --> In Progress --> Review

Let me know how it goes.