Best way to track ongoing tasks in Scrum?

[Rachel Park]

Hi, everyone! 

We are a small team that uses a Scrum board to track multiple projects in one sprint. Some tasks are ongoing and may repeat over sprints (e.g. "Ongoing support"), and I am trying to determine the best way to track these in JIRA across multiple sprints?

1. Should I have a story that just changes status during the sprint that never really closes, since it is ongoing? OR
2. Should I create a story for only the current sprint, close it, and then create a similar story for the next sprint? 

Any tips/feedback are greatly appreciated - thank you! 

[Scott Theus · Accepted solution]

Hi Rachel,

Have you tried a Kanban board instead of a Scrum board? By it's nature, a Scrum story is a "one and done" type of task; it gets added to a sprint when the scrum team is ready to develop it. If thew story is not completed during the sprint then it should be put back in the backlog. A Kanban board, however, does not need to use sprints and stories can stay "In process" as needed. 

Also...I assume you are using these ongoing stories/tasks for time tracking and not as an indicator of "done" for the projects.  If that is the case then the Kanban board can help track the items that span sprints across the project as open "in process" items while you reserve the sprints and the Scrum board for the project's development efforts that have distinct start and finish criteria, thus keeping your sprint metrics accurate and allowing you to track the overall progress of the project and time logged.

Hope that helps, 

Scott

[Rachel Park]

Thanks, Scott! I had wondered about doing it that way, too, but I wanted to be sure to have ALL tasks that would need to be completed by the team on the Scrum backlog for our upcoming sprint. Then, during planning, we could see them all in one place as we estimate.

Would having only the ongoing tasks in a Kanban board allow that? 

Thanks! 

[Scott Theus]

Yes...you could have all the tasks in the Kanban board and only the sprint tasks in the Scrum board. To set it up pull all the tasks into Kanban and filter the Scrum board by sprint. (e.g. If the story is part of a sprint it shows on both boards. If not it just shows on the Kanban board.)

As you move a story through the sprint columns (To Do, In Process, and Done) the status is reflected on both boards. Meanwhile, once a task that crosses sprints like "Ongoing Support" starts you just move it to "in process" on the Kanban board and it pulls it from the backlog. At the end of the sprint you can either move it back to "to do" and thus back to the backlog for your next sprint planning or leave it as "in process." This way you are managing the ongoing tasks separately from the sprints and getting an idea of how much time they are pulling from the Scrum team. You are also keeping your sprint velocity based on stories that are actually completed rather than those ongoing tasks that move from sprint to sprint, giving you a more accurate insight into development effort vs. maintenance.

-Scott