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Here are the explanation of both, however, so you can interpret other people's reports, if they still come in that fashion.
Weekly Email
This is simply an email that you should send to your team's mailing list on Fridays, outlining what you have worked on.
You should not use this style from now on, but understanding it will make the Jira style more clear.
Style
The format is usually known as "3x3", with three sections:
- What you have worked on, including references to Jira tickets, short comments and the amount you've worked on each of them.
- What you plan to do next week, including continuations, new tasks, holidays, etc.
- Any serious problems or blocking issues, to raise awareness that you may not be performing as optimally as expected.
Jira + wort time
Linking the Jira card (by title, ex. HPC-123) and a short description of what you've done.
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We usually try not to waste more than one day a week on meetings. If you have too many meetings or you're wasting too much time discussing on lists and reviewing patches, make sure you sync with your tech lead to reduce that time.
Plans for next week
These are normally simple and often obvious tasks, but show which of the tasks you performed this week will need continuation, which will be closing and which new ones will be started.
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The most important is: keep it simple, keep it short.
Problems and blockages
If you had any major blocking issues, make sure you mention them in here. This section normally doesn't appear on the reviews, as we keep them for special occurrences that not always happen.
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However, plans not always work as weeks pass, and it's ok to plan one thing on the previous week and do something different this one. For that reason, you don'y have to explain every plan that didn't work in this section, only the major and uncommon occurrences.
Jira update
Now that we're all using Jira Kanban boards, we can see our progress as it happens. Adding comments directly to the tasks, moving them across the board and creating new tasks on the fly is the best way to report your progress without adding bureaucracy to the process.
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But for that to work, the right cards need to be updated as you progress, with comments and changes to the workflow (status, priority, sub-tasks). If engineers don't update the cards, tech leads and project managers have no way to know what has been done.
Three Blocks
Jira + wort time
Since we're updating Jira cards, we don't need to reference the cards anywhere. Just adding comments to the cards would be enough.
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Also make sure to keep the workflow correct. Only keep "In Progress" what you're actively working on that week, and move to "Upstream Review" what's waiting on the community or back to "TODO" what you have put on hold.
Plans for next week
Tasks that are "Open" are unassigned meaning no one will work on them any time soon. Once you plan on working with something, assign that card to you (or create a new one and assign it), so that it appears in your "TODO" column.
This is essentially the "next week" plan. Given the vague nature of the original plan, and how it could be overruled but new tasks, there's no difference at all.
Problems and blockages
All problems and blockages should be reported immediately at the appropriate channels, copying your internal development list and your tech lead.
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So, if you have a blocked task, but you can do other tasks while you wait for that one task to be unblocked, do not move them to the "Blocked" column.
Overall
The following picture summarises the usage of Jira:
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