Ever felt like your team is playing a never-ending game of whack-a-mole? One minute you're fixing a bug, the next you're chasing down a feature request, and by the time you return to your original task... you've forgotten what it was in the first place. Enter: tickets — the heroes of organized work.
Imagine building IKEA furniture without instructions. That's your project without tickets. Tickets provide structure, reduce chaos, and ensure your brilliant ideas don't vanish like socks in the laundry.
The Magic of Tickets
Clarity Through Communication
Tickets break down complex projects into clear, actionable tasks.
They turn vague instructions like "Fix that thing" into precise steps like "Resolve bug #1524: Button color mismatch."
Visibility for Everyone
Statistics show that upper management knows only 4% of company problems. Meanwhile, frontline employees know 100%.
Tickets bridge this gap by creating a transparent system where information flows up, down, and sideways.
Cognitive Load Reduction
Ever tried remembering 17 to-do items while your inbox explodes?
Tickets reduce that burden. Instead of keeping everything in your head, tickets act like a second brain, letting you focus on one task at a time.
Tracking and Measuring Progress
"What gets measured gets managed." Tickets track changes, document decisions, and highlight risks early.
They also serve as a crystal-clear log of who did what, when, and why.
Prioritization Power
Tickets help you identify urgent topics, ensure critical issues aren’t forgotten, and prevent teams from sprinting in the wrong direction.
No more wasting time on low-priority work while urgent fixes pile up.
Risk Management
If one engineer is juggling 80% of the workload, that’s a recipe for disaster.
Tickets distribute work evenly, ensuring that if someone’s out sick, progress doesn’t grind to a halt.
No Ticket = No Work
The golden rule: If it’s not in a ticket, it doesn’t exist.
Without tickets:
- Important ideas disappear.
- Bugs go unfixed.
- Features take twice as long.
- The same tasks get discussed 27 times with no resolution.
With introduce Order to chaos.
Suddenly, everyone’s aligned, priorities are clear, and progress is measurable. Plus, there’s a certain joy in closing a ticket — like finishing the last episode of your favorite series.
Embrace the Ticket Life
Tickets aren’t just admin busywork — they’re your secret weapon to turning good ideas into reality. Whether you're a product manager, engineer, or designer, they’ll keep your projects on track, your mind uncluttered, and your stress levels manageable.
So, next time someone says, "Can you quickly look at this?" ask the magic question: "Is there a ticket for that?"
Your future self will thank you.
Types of Tickets
The right ticket, choose you must - Yoda
🌐 Initiative
Initiative: A big, long-term (1-year) goal — think "Smart Home System Implementation" or "Redesign the Entire User Interface."
Example
Title: Implement Smart Home Electrical Lightning System
Description: This initiative aims to develop and deploy a comprehensive smart home electrical lighting system over the next year.
Goals:
- Enhanced energy efficiency.
- Improved user convenience through automation.
- Integration with existing smart home ecosystems.
🧩 Theme
Theme: A collection/group of related features — like building out the automated lighting functionality in your smart home project.
Example:
Title: Develop Automated Smart Lights Functionality
Description: This theme focuses on the development of features that enable automated control of home lighting.
Features:
- Schedule lighting based on time of day.
- Motion-activated lighting.
- Integration with voice assistants.
🚀 Feature
Feature: Something big enough to release tu users — e.g., "Implement Wireless Light Control."
Example
Title: Implement Wireless Communication for Light Control
Description: This feature will enable wireless communication between light switches, light bulbs, and the central control system. It will utilize a reliable and secure wireless protocol (e.g., Zigbee, Z-Wave, Wi-Fi). This feature is essential for enabling remote and automated control of the lights.
📖 Story
Story: Focuses on user behaviour, values and outcomes — The “What” and the “Why”
Example
Title: User can toggle the light bulb on/off with a single switch tap.
Description: As a user, I want to be able to turn a light bulb on or off by tapping a physical switch so that I can easily control the lights in my home.
Acceptance Criteria:
- A single tap on the physical switch toggles the light bulb's state.
- The change in the light bulb's state is immediate.
- The physical switch is responsive.
📜 Epic
Epic: A gigantic/massive/epic story — "Automatic Night Light Mode" with complex functionality and multiple requirements.
Example
Title: Implement Automatic Night Light Activation via Switch Taps
Description: As a user, I want to be able to set a night light mode that automatically turns on a dim light when a specific sequence of switch taps is performed, so that I can easily navigate at night without bright lights.
Acceptance Criteria:
- Night Light Mode Configuration:
- Users can enable or disable the night light mode through the application's settings.
- Users can define a specific sequence of switch taps to activate the night light mode (e.g., three quick taps).
- Users can configure the desired brightness level for the night light mode.
- Users can configure which lightbulb(s) are affected by night light mode.
- Users can configure the duration the night light stays active.
- Switch Tap Sequence Recognition:
- The system accurately detects and interprets the defined switch tap sequence.
- The system ignores unintended tap sequences that do not match the configured pattern.
- The system has a configurable time window within which the tap sequence must be completed.
- The system provides user feedback if the tap sequence was recognised or not.
- Night Light Activation:
- Upon successful recognition of the tap sequence, the specified lightbulb(s) automatically transition to the configured night light brightness level.
- The transition to the night light brightness is smooth and gradual.
- The night light turns off after the configured duration.
- The night light can be turned off by a single tap of the switch, even if the duration is not finished.
- User Feedback:
- The application provides visual or audible feedback to indicate that the night light mode has been activated.
- The application provides clear instructions on how to configure and use the night light mode.
- The application provides clear error messages if the tap sequence is invalid.
- Performance and Reliability:
- The system responds to switch taps with minimal delay.
- The night light mode functions reliably under various network conditions.
- The night light mode does not interfere with other light control functionalities.
- Accessibility:
- The night light mode configuration and activation are accessible to users with disabilities, adhering to accessibility guidelines.
- Testing:
- Unit tests cover the switch tap sequence recognition logic.
- Integration tests verify the interaction between the switch, the application, and the lightbulb(s).
- User acceptance testing confirms that the night light mode meets user requirements.
✅ Task
Task: The nuts and bolts of "how" something should be used — like "using a Zigbee Library"
Example:
Title: Add Zigbee Wireless Communication Protocol
Description: Add the Zigbee library into the firmware.
💡 Enhancement
Enhancement: Improvements or new ideas — "Add Voice Control for Smart Lights."
Talks about:
- Requests, Enchantments, Wishes, …
- from User, Stockholders, Clients, Customer, …
- towards the Business a specific product or specific Functional
Example
Title: Integrate Voice Command Control for Smart Lights
Description: As a user, I would like to be able to control the smart lights using voice commands through a voice assistant (e.g., Alexa, Google Assistant). This enhancement would allow for hands-free control of the lights.
Acceptance Criteria:
- Voice commands to turn lights on/off.
- Voice commands to dim/brighten lights.
- Voice commands to change light colors (if applicable).
⚠️ Issue
Issue: A generic "problem" that requires investigation — "Lightbulb #003 isn’t responding."
An issue is not yet categorised (often a helpdesk ticket) and dependend on the content It could lead to a Bug, Enhancement, Story, or Task (it's recommend to clone issues and link them to the specific tickets)
Using the example below the Issue could be categorized as follows
- Issue -> A-Bug: If the issue is a wireless communication failure preventing all commands.
- Issue -> Task: If the lightbulb needs to be replaced.
- Issue -> Enhancement: If the user wants a log of commands sent to the bulb.
Example:
Title: Lightbulb #003 is not responding to switch commands.
Description: Lightbulb #003 is not responding to commands from the physical switch.
Possible causes:
- Wireless communication issue.
- Lightbulb malfunction.
- Switch malfunction.
Action: Investigate and determine the root cause.
🐞 Bug
Bugs: Existing functionality that’s misbehaving — from "App Crash on Login" to "Button Color Off." Bugs are categorized as:
- A-Bugs: Critical crashes that need immediate attention.
- B-Bugs: Functional flaws (workaround?)
- C-Bugs: Cosmetic issues with minimal impact
Thius means a missing behaviour in NOT a Bug its an Enchancment, Feature, Story, .....
Tip: Add steps to reproduce the bug to your describtion, this will save everyone on the team a lot of time.
Class "A" Bug
A-Bugs result in a crash or a significant malfunction of the application
- The page is not loading
- Module missing
- Question are not being displayed
"A-Bugs" should be solved ASAP - ideally this or next Sprint
Example
Title: A-Bug: Main control panel fails to load after user login.
Description: After a successful login, the main control panel fails to load, rendering the system unusable.
Priority: ASAP
Class B (Bug)
B-Bugs result in functionality that is not working properly but the solution continues working, and there might be even a workaround
- English text in a Spanish translation
- A chart does not show all the data.
- The Page loads extremly slow
"B-Bugs" should be planned for the “Next-Sprint” or a Sprint in the near Future (before moving on to the next Feature)
Example:
Title: B-Bug: Light schedule settings display incorrect time format.
Description: The light schedule settings page displays the time in an incorrect format (e.g., 24-hour instead of 12-hour), though the scheduling functionality itself works.
Priority: Next Sprint
Class C (Bug)
C-Bugs are also called "Beauty" Bugs and will be planned based on availability and Prioritization
- A field has a slightly different shade
- Emails are sent, but the format is not perfect
- A button should have rounded corners but it has rectangular
"C-Bugs" should be planned for a future Sprint and ideally implemented before a major release
Example:
Title: C-Bug: The Button color on the settings page has a slightly different shade.
Description: The "Save" button on the settings page has a slightly different shade of blue compared to other buttons in the application.
Priority: Future Sprint