Task sizing
Lesson 2 of 11 · 3 min 34 s. Episode 2 of the Jaah tutorial series: three sizes of work side by side. A sketch that hands back a clickable mockup with no code changed, the same task built once you like it, and an epic that is analysed, designed and planned before it is split into tasks and checked against the original request.
Before you start
- You have done Task basics and are signed in to the console.
- You have a project you can start tasks in. The lesson uses TimeSaver, a time-tracking app for small teams.
Steps
- Open the new-task form in your project and start with an idea you'd like to see before anyone builds it. The lesson's description is: A Today page that shows the day's entries on a timeline, hour by hour.
- Under the description, choose the first size, Sketch. How big the piece of work is decides what comes back: a sketch is a quick mockup to look at, and nothing in the code changes. Choose Unattended as well to leave the agent to it.
- Press Go. The sketch appears on Tasks, and an agent takes it on as soon as the machine is free.
- Wait for the sketch's mark to change to finished. A sketch is quick, and nothing has been changed in the project's code.
- Open the sketch's page, then Artifacts. The mockup is drawn in the app's own style and it's a working page, so click around it the way a user would and decide whether it's what you had in mind.
- When you like it, build it from the same task. Open the Task tab, change its size from Sketch to Task, and press Go. The same description now goes to an agent that changes the code, and the sketch stays on Artifacts for comparison.
- Now something too big for one task. Click New Task again. The lesson's description is: Let people set a budget in hours for each project, see how much is left on the timesheet, get a warning when a project is close to its budget, and compare budget with actual hours on the Reports page.
- Choose the third size, Epic. An epic is worked out first and then split into tasks. Choose Unattended again, and press Go.
- On Tasks, both are now listed. The build of the sketch is under way, and the epic has a plus beside its title; click it to open the stages that work it out before anything is built: an analysis of what's asked, a design, and a plan.
- While the epic is being worked out, the regular task finishes. In the lesson, TimeSaver's site has a new Today page, with the hour-by-hour timeline from the sketch and the day's entries on it, and it passed the team's tests.
- Open the analysis stage's page on its Artifacts tab. Each stage of the epic hands back a document, and the analysis is the first: it turns the request into requirements, with the decisions it took, what must be true for each part to count as done, and how each will be checked. The design and the plan build on it.
- Once the plan is finished, open the epic's Subtasks. Below the stages that worked it out are the tasks the plan split it into, each a change of its own, built and checked like the one you made before. They run one after another on the project's machine, and the list shows where each has got to.
- When the last task is done, the epic finishes with one more stage. Open Details: that last stage checks everything that was delivered against the original request, its notes say what it found, and beside them is what the whole feature took, in time and in cost.
- Try the feature in the app. In the lesson, each TimeSaver project shows its budget and how much is left, and the one that's nearly used up carries a warning.
What you learned
- There are three sizes: a Sketch to look at, a Task to build, and an Epic for the big ones.
- A sketch hands back a clickable mockup on Artifacts and changes nothing in the code. Build it from the same task by switching its size to Task.
- An epic is analysed, designed and planned first, then split into tasks under Subtasks, and a last stage checks everything against the original request.
Next
Next lesson: Managing human in the loop. Previous: Task basics.
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