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Managing Assessment Matrix Automatically within Jira

At first glance, this topic might seem very specific, and it can be, but keep in mind that in one way or another, in your life as a Jira Administrator, you'll encounter this type of requirement. And that's why today we're grateful for Jira Automations and its smart values.


What would the typical scenarios be?

  1. Assign criticality or risk of an incident based on impact, number of users affected, duration of the interruption, and business sensitivity.

  2. Assign an estimate to a requirement based on size, impact, and complexity.

The general idea is that the client needs the value of a field (field A) to be automatically calculated based on the values selected in other fields (fields B, C, D, etc.). The added complexity is that depending on how the values of B, C, and D are combined, field A will assume a different value. This is where the evaluation or value combination matrix comes into play, which you will absolutely need to build the automation.

How do we implement it?


I'm going to assume you've already explored the automation options and at least created a basic rule. There are three main steps to follow for implementing this type of requirement, and we'll use a simple example to make it as practical as possible. However, the steps are general enough to apply to any complexity; they are:



Define the Matrix


At this point, you'll need to work with your client. Ideally, they'll have the complete matrix ready for implementation. In this scenario, take the time to understand it and ask all the necessary questions. If it's incomplete, work on it with the client to achieve something similar using the following example structure:


Requirement: Automatically determine the risk based on the selected priority and impact.

Each combination of Impact - Probability value will return a risk, which can assume the following values: Low, Medium, High.

So, let's start shaping the automation and add some logic:

  • If it is <=2, then Low Risk

  • If it is > 2 and <=4, then Medium Risk

  • If it is >=6 then High risk


It fine-tunes the fields and screen that will participate.


Following the previous example, we will need 3 custom fields in Jira:

  • Probability: High - Medium - Low

  • Impact: High - Medium - Low

  • Risk: High - Medium - Low

In this case, these custom fields will be of the simple selection list type.


Tips :

  • Leave the autocalculated field (in this example Risk) non-editable, only available on the display screen.

  • Makes the Impact and Probability fields mandatory

  • It's recommended that the fields you use for the calculation be as standard as possible, such as selection lists, to avoid human error and prevent the automation from failing. You can review my previous post on criteria for creating custom fields at the following link.

It generates automation


To generate the automation rule, you must go to the Automation option of each project (or generate a global rule if you need to apply it to many projects) and select the Create Rule option.

Remember that an automation rule has 3 basic parts:

  • Trigger

  • Conditions (optional)

  • Actions

Keep in mind that this example is simple, and possibly this same example could be solved in a less complex way than the one presented below, but given that there are evaluation matrices that can become complex in terms of calculations or number of values involved, this way of implementing it will work for you even for those scenarios.

So let's begin with the Trigger of this example.


This rule should be triggered every time any of the Impact or Probability fields are edited.

What follows is not a requirement, but rather a way to determine the weight or values of Probability and Impact, according to the selected option. To do this, we will need to create smart values.



Now, we must create an if/else block, so that according to the value selected in Priority we must assign the corresponding weight:

  • Low = 1

  • Average = 2

  • High = 3

We must do the same with Low Probability, assigning it 1.


The next step is to create the same if/else block for Impact , and assign the corresponding weight according to the selected value:

  • Low = 1

  • Medium = 2

  • Height = 3


We must do the same with Low Impact, assigning it the 1.


Okay! Let's calculate the risk now. The formula for this variable is quite simple:


{{#=}}{{Probability}}*{{Impact}}{{/}}

Finally, the action is to update the Risk custom field according to the value we obtained, so let's create another if/else block:

We must do the same with Risk > 5, assigning it a High value.


Done! Now you just need to publish and validate the rule. Don't forget to test all scenarios to avoid future problems.



Do you have a different approach to implementing what's been presented? Tell us in the comments.

It's very common to find more than one way to do things with Atlassian tools, and we'd love to discover other ways to solve them.

We hope you enjoyed reading it.


Until next time.




















 
 
 

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