I’m not officially a project manager but I’m leading a small development team and we keep hitting the same annoying issue.
Our project tickets in our tracking system are just awful. They’re missing tons of important details, the requirements don’t make sense, and whenever someone new tries to work on a ticket (or even when the original developer comes back to it later), they have to figure out everything from the beginning again.
I get that we should just write better documentation, but honestly developers really don’t like writing documentation and creating detailed tickets.
The main problems I keep noticing:
New team members waste tons of time trying to understand what a ticket is actually asking for
Working on related parts of the system is really hard because we’re missing important background info
Even I don’t completely understand every piece of code in our repository
I’ve been thinking about a solution for this. Maybe something that could automatically grab context from our daily meetings and team discussions, then smartly add that missing info to our tickets. The important part would be really understanding how our code is built and organized.
Does this seem like it would fix a genuine problem? How have other people handled this same issue?
Had this exact same problem when I moved from dev to team lead three years ago. That automated solution sounds nice, but honestly it’s more about culture than tech. We fixed it with simple peer reviews before tickets hit the sprint. Paired experienced devs with newer ones during ticket creation - improved quality and worked as knowledge transfer. Made it clear that crappy tickets just bounce back and create more work for everyone. Your idea about grabbing context from meetings is interesting, but I found the really important stuff happens in random conversations that never get recorded anyway. We started requiring a quick “definition of done” section and made people explain the business context in normal English. Helped tons with those related systems issues you mentioned. People definitely resist documentation, but framing it as “saving future you from confusion” instead of just bureaucracy helped with buy-in.
Been down this exact rabbit hole before. The ticket quality thing is a nightmare that kills velocity faster than anything else.
Here’s what worked for me - instead of trying to change developer behavior (good luck with that), I automated the whole context gathering process. Set up workflows that pull info from multiple sources automatically.
When someone creates a ticket, the system grabs recent commits from related files, pulls conversation snippets from Slack channels, and even analyzes code dependencies to suggest what might be affected. All that context gets dumped right into the ticket without anyone having to write a novel.
The key is connecting your project management tool with everything else your team already uses. Git repos, chat apps, meeting recordings, documentation wikis - everything feeds into one smart workflow that builds better tickets without extra human effort.
I’ve seen teams cut their “what does this ticket even mean” time by like 70% once they get this kind of automation running. Developers still hate documentation, but they love not having to ask clarifying questions every five minutes.
The business context part is huge too. You can set up triggers that automatically tag tickets with affected user stories or related features based on file paths and code analysis.
Latenode makes building these kinds of workflows super straightforward since it connects basically everything and has smart data processing built in. Way easier than trying to code custom integrations.
This hits home - I went from solo dev to managing six people and faced the exact same thing. Your automated context idea is solid, but I took a slightly different approach that might work alongside it. We do monthly ‘ticket archaeology’ sessions where we spend an hour tearing apart our worst tickets from the last sprint to figure out what went wrong. The patterns jump out fast: missing user context, vague edge cases, and wrong assumptions about how the system works. What blew my mind was how often the real requirements were buried in random code comments or old emails that never made it to the actual ticket. Now we require a ‘related context’ section that links to relevant discussions, old tickets, or specific code. Here’s the thing - devs don’t actually hate documenting stuff when they realize it means fewer interruptions later asking ‘wait, what did you mean by this?’ Your automated approach could be killer if it focuses on finding these hidden connections instead of just throwing more info at people.
Hit this problem constantly on my last three projects. What actually worked was making ‘acceptance criteria’ mandatory with specific test scenarios. Devs hate writing docs but they get testing logic. The real game changer? Making whoever estimates the ticket write a brief technical approach. People started asking way better questions upfront because they couldn’t estimate what they didn’t understand. Caught most ambiguous requirements before dev even started. Your automated context idea’s solid, but watch out for information overload. We tried that and buried tickets under walls of auto-generated junk that looked helpful but wasn’t. The breakthrough was treating ticket quality as blocking - poor tickets don’t get assigned until they’re fixed. Creates natural pressure without being a pain about it.
we tried tons of fancy tools but nothing worked until we made whoever writes the ticket also handle the code review. amazing how fast people started writing clear descriptions when they knew they’d have to deal with their own mess later lol
totally get what ur saying! we had similar struggles, then our lead introduced ticket templates with must-fill fields. at first, it felt annoying, but after a while, it was chill and made writing tickets easier. def worth a shot b4 lookin for costly solutions!