Contractor Effort Tracking

Gradient uses metrics to determine the profitability of client projects, manage bandwidth, and evaluate effort by Gradient team members. This contractor effort tracking process was created to make sure we are including contractor effort in our performance metrics.

Gradient has created a singular Contractor profile in Jira to be used to assign contractor issues and track effort in Gradient metrics. The decision to use one contractor profile as opposed to multiple (one for each department or one for each known contractor) was because each issue tracking contractor effort will be assigned to a specific project and, therefore, it cleanly integrates into our performance metrics configuration.

While it is our goal to include all issues while roadmapping upon project startup, sometimes we do need to add issues along the way. If one of the issues you need to add is for Contractor work please be mindful to update these closely, as these reflect hard costs (hours) we will be invoiced for. Operations will keep aware of Contractor issues in order to anticipate incoming invoices.

Manually create a new issue under the appropriate Project with a Story issue type.

Continue to fill out the Create issue page with all the required information, remembering to select or complete the following:

• Summary: e.g., “Canary Survey Programming”
• Linked Issues: relates to > [select corresponding issue]
• Description: [spec for assignment]
• Assignee: Contractor
• Estimated Story Points: Be as accurate as possible in your selection
  • Actual Story Points will be updated once we receive the contractor’s invoice
• Sprint: Current sprint or a future sprint, depending on the expected timeline for completion of the contractor’s work.
• Fix Versions: Always make sure that you are selecting the correct release

Again, it is the Project Lead’s responsibility to manage the issue and move it through the appropriate statuses/workflow in a timely manner. Don’t let these issues be forgotten and left behind!