Comment by hnlmorg

I have managed a team in an organisation that used Jira heavily to measure velocity and having all contributors record time on tickets, even if they were just supporting, did actually help lots:

1. It allows for more accurate estimations (ie this is not a multi-day task but it is a multi-person task)

2. It showed where knowledge transferring was happing

3. It showed that people were busy so that it meant we were making accurate estimates to begin with.

I do think Agile can get overly prescriptive. But if you do happen to work in a company that operates that way, pushing back might be impossible. So having multiple participants record their effort against the same ticket then allows a more organic way for the team to operate despite the rigid structure of a stricter scrum dynamic.

Or in other words: sometimes you cannot change the system entirely so you’re next best option is to tweak it so it at least better works for you. And that’s what the GPs suggest achieves.