JIRA Ticket Hygiene Skill

When to Use This Skill

Activate this skill when the user:

• Asks if a ticket is "ready", "complete", or "well-defined"
• Asks about ticket quality or completeness
• Wants to review a ticket before sprint planning
• Asks "does this ticket have enough information?"
• Wants to validate tickets meet team standards
• Asks about missing fields or requirements

Hygiene Checklist

Required Fields (Must Have)

• Title: Clear, actionable, under 100 characters
• Description: Detailed context (recommend > 100 characters)
• Acceptance Criteria: At least 2 clear, testable criteria
• Story Points: Set for Stories, Tasks, and Bugs (use scale: 0, 1, 3, 5, 8, 13)
• Assignee: Someone owns the ticket
• Component: Assigned to track by area
• Activity Type: Must be set for capacity planning (see Activity Types below)

Recommended Fields

• Labels: At least 1 relevant label
• Epic Link: Connected to parent epic (for Stories)
• Fix Version: Target release identified
• Priority: Explicitly set (not just default)

Quality Checks

• No ambiguous language ("maybe", "probably", "TBD", "possibly")
• Technical approach outlined or referenced
• Dependencies identified and linked
• Not a duplicate of existing ticket
• Scope is achievable in one sprint

How to Check a Ticket

Use jira-cli to fetch ticket details:

jira issue view TICKET-KEY --plain 2>/dev/null

For JSON output with all fields:

jira issue view TICKET-KEY --json 2>/dev/null

Output Format

When analyzing a ticket, provide:

Ticket: TICKET-KEY

Summary: [Ticket title]

Hygiene Assessment

Check	Status	Notes
Title	PASS/FAIL	[Issue if any]
Description	PASS/FAIL	[Length: X chars]
Acceptance Criteria	PASS/FAIL	[Count: X criteria]
Story Points	PASS/FAIL	[Value or "Missing"]
Assignee	PASS/FAIL	[Name or "Unassigned"]
Component	PASS/FAIL	[Component or "None"]
Activity Type	PASS/FAIL	[Type or "Uncategorized"]

Overall Score: X/7 Required Checks Passed

Verdict

• READY FOR SPRINT - All required fields present, good quality
• NEEDS MINOR FIXES - 1-2 issues to address
• NOT READY - Multiple critical issues

Recommended Actions

1. [Specific action to fix issue 1]
2. [Specific action to fix issue 2]

Activity Types (Sankey Capacity Allocation)

Activity Type is required for sprint/kanban capacity planning. Tickets without an Activity Type appear as "Uncategorized" and cannot be properly allocated.

Reactive Work (Non-Negotiable First)

Activity Type	Description	Examples
Associate Wellness & Development	Onboarding, team growth, training, associate experience	Training sessions, mentorship
Incidents & Support	Escalations, production issues	Customer escalations, outages
Security & Compliance	Vulnerabilities and weaknesses, CVEs	Security patches, compliance fixes

Core Principles (Quality Focus)

Activity Type	Description	Examples
Quality / Stability / Reliability	Bugs, SLOs, chores, tech debt, PMR action items, toil reduction	Bug fixes, performance improvements

Proactive Work (Balance Remaining Capacity)

Activity Type	Description	Examples
Future Sustainability	Productivity improvements, team improvements, upstream, proactive architecture, enablement	Tooling, automation, refactoring
Product / Portfolio Work	Strategic portfolio (HATSTRAT), strategic product, product outcome, BU features	New features, product enhancements

Priority Order

1. Non-Negotiable: Achieve SLAs for Escalations & CVEs
2. Core Principles: Reduce bug backlog, ensure quality/stability/reliability
3. Then Balance: Set up for long-term success by balancing remaining capacity between Future Sustainability and Product Work

Red Flags to Highlight

• Descriptions under 50 characters
• "TBD" or placeholder text in any field
• Story points of 13+ (must be broken down)
• No acceptance criteria at all
• Vague titles like "Fix bug" or "Update feature"
• Tickets open > 30 days without progress
• Missing Activity Type (appears as Uncategorized in capacity planning)

Integration with Commands

This skill complements the /hygiene-check command:

• Command: Bulk audit of sprint tickets
• Skill: Deep-dive on individual ticket quality