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Do you use the "Done" column in your active sprint board?

Boyan Iliev
Contributor
June 11, 2025

Hi all,

 

By default, JIRA shows a "Done" column in the active sprints. We have come to realize that we rarely use this column and as a result - it just takes extra space and caused extra scrolling towards the end of the sprint (like the "Open"/"To Do" column at the beginning).

 

In your experience, do you use this column and how? Have you removed it from your boards?

image.png

Thank you!

3 answers

1 accepted

1 vote
Answer accepted
John Funk
Community Champion
June 11, 2025

Hi Boyan,

You must have that column otherwise the Sprint cannot be closed or the issues will not be considered completed. Sprints in Jira required that the issues be in the far right (last) column to be considered completed. That is regardless of the status. So, no, just because it is in a Done category status does not mean that the issue is completed, and will roll to the next Sprint. 

Boyan Iliev
Contributor
June 11, 2025

Thank you @John Funk , just tested this and it seems like you are right.

 

That being said - it sounds weird having a board column determine sprint ability to be closed. At least my understanding is that the column is nothing more than a filter by status. Just like the scrum/kanban boards are a visual representation of a combination of filters.

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John Funk
Community Champion
June 12, 2025

No arguments there - not sure why they designed it that way. But it is what it is. 

1 vote
Jaime Escribano
Rising Star
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June 11, 2025

Hi @Boyan Iliev !

Interesting discussion 😊

I do use the Done column, usually helped by adding a time limit to it so that tickets older than 2 weeks are removed from the board (though not deleted). That way the team can tell at a glance what work was done recently while it's still relevant.

 

By the way, I notice you have a large number of tickets in that column. Is it possible that your tickets are not assigned a Resolution when they are moved to Closed? That would cause them to never disappear from the board, causing clutter.

 

You can easily check if your closed work items have a resolution by looking at whether or not they have a green check by the status:

resolution.png

 

Looking forward to hearing other members' experiences!

 

Regards,

Jaime Escribano

Boyan Iliev
Contributor
June 11, 2025

The 999+ appears as I did a dummy board for the sake of having an image in the post. I'm not even sure what was the filter for this board (already deleted) :) 

Usually we have ~100 items at the end of the sprint in the done column. This includes everything - stories, their subtasks, QA tests, bugs and anything else that might pop-up ad-hoc.

 

The time limit might be an option to reduce the clutter. The problem is that its really rare to actually have to check something done. Usually if we have to, we use filters as they are way more powerful than what we have in the board.

Boyan Iliev
Contributor
June 11, 2025

@Jaime Escribano as I wrote my answer I realize that we don't use the board filter for done items, exactly because they are so much and a JQL makes it easier to find what you are looking for.

0 votes
Tomislav Tobijas
Community Champion
June 11, 2025

Hi @Boyan Iliev ,

It depends as there are numerous different use cases, but I'd say in majority of instances users have 'Done' or some end column as that's the one system is looking at when you're closing the sprint and you'll get asked about remaining items (unmapped or in other board columns) if you want to move those items to different sprint or backlog.

Again, there might be cases where you'd stay way from this 'Done' column, but from my experience, usually there's a column like the one you mentioned on the active sprints board. 👀

Cheers,
Tobi

Boyan Iliev
Contributor
June 11, 2025

I believe the system wills till pick up the done status at the end of the sprint even if you do not have the column itself.

 

"Remaining" items will not be in this column anyway, so I'm not worried for missing them. Possibly even making it easier to see them, without the need to scroll 10 times.

 

I would really like to hear a real-world scenario, where this column is actively being used. We can argue that its a way for the team to see their progress, but amount of items is not a great indication of progress - 1 done feature with 1 bug is better than 1 done feature with 10 bugs. But the second one might mislead that is progressing better as visually you see more items "done".

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