Days in todo column always very high

[Robert Condon]

I am hoping to gain some guidance as to how scrum boards interpret the 'Days in Column' metric. 

To my understanding, in order for an item to appear in the Sprint Back, the status must be mapped to a column on the Scrum Board.
But this means that items that have been in a status mapped to the To Do column for a long time, always start the sprint with a very high count of 'Days in Column'

Would appreciate ideas on:

1. How to show items in the Sprint Backlog without having the status mapped to a column
   OR
2. Was for the 'Days in Column' counter to only run once a sprint has started.

My best idea so far is to use automation to perform a status change as soon as a Sprint starts

thanks

[Dick · Accepted solution]

Hi @Robert Condon 

You can use the Open status for backlog, and an Approved status as first column in your sprint board. When filling the sprint with the team, they pull from the backlog and place the items in the approved box (you can do this in the backlog view).

The metrics you're after would be related to the Days in Approved column.

Kind regards,
Dick

[Robert Condon]

Thanks Dick, 

From what we are seeing, we have to have the status mapped to a column for it to appear in the backlog. 
But then it shows as being in that column for multiple days as soon as the sprint starts. 

If we remove the status from all columns, then items in that status don't appear in the backlog at all

[Bill Sheboy]

Hi @Robert Condon 

This is a long-standing defect for Scrum boards and the feature "Days in Column".  The defects / suggestions to address this often close as "timed out", such as this one: https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRACLOUD-86901

The only workaround I can think of to improve the accuracy for a Scrum board is to use a separate custom field and automation rules to update the value.  This will work for basic cases, but not easily count when an issue has moved back-and-forth between board columns.

Kind regards,
Bill

[Robert Condon]

Thanks Bill. 

This was also my findings, but I was not able to find any outstanding feature requests or bugs related to the functionality

[Bill Sheboy]

Agreed: I just checked again and did not find an open suggestion for actually tracking by-column versus status-mapped-to-column.  You could try adding a new suggestion under the ? / Help > Give Feedback about Jira.