Hi, I am seeing issues which have reached the done status in my backlog. Why would this happen?

[M B]

I have joined an existing team and Jira workflow has been split into two boards, one for UXD and one for delivery. So I currently have access to 3 boards for this one project UXD board (contains UXD workflow) Delivery board ( contains engineering workflow) and the combined board as one workflow

Each board has a different amount of issues in the backlog 

UXD Board = 329 issues (This seems to be the correct backlog as it only contains issues in the backlog status) 

Delivery Board = 420 issues (None of which are in the backlog status) 

Combined Board = 749 issues (Which are across a variety of in progress and done statuses) 

When I filter the combined board on issues with the backlog status it shows me 325 out of 855 (A different number of total issues than before I apply the filter) 

So I guess I have 3 questions

1. Why is each board showing me a different backlog size

2. Why are two boards showing issues which are in the in progress and done statuses 

3. How do I fix this?

Thanks

[Walter Buggenhout · Accepted solution]

Hi @Morayo Bamidele and welcome to the Community!

It is important to understand that boards and projects/issues are different things. You store your issues in a project and use a board (or multiple boards) to visualise them to your team.

The backlog of a board is a column with a status mapped to it. As you mention, your delivery board does not use the backlog status, but a different one. Which makes perfect sense, by the way, since this is the part of the process where delivery starts.

When you run a filter and only select issues in the backlog status, you automatically exclude everything that is in another status.

To make sure you understand what is what on each board, you should verify (and understand) for each board:

• what selection of issues is on the board. You can validate that by going to Board settings > General and locate the board filter;
• how the workflow statuses of the issues are mapped to the columns of each board. You can check that via Board Settings > Columns

When comparing numbers of issues through filters, make sure that your start with that shared understanding in mind. When you apply filters, you are only selecting issues from Jira that meet certain criteria. Similar to what your board filters do. If you start from a different initial selection, you will inevitably see different results.

One last remark: every filter you run in Jira returns results in real time. If you see small differences in numbers when you compare different selections, maybe the status of certain issues has changed in between. That may also explain why the numbers turn out differently.

Hope this helps!

[M B]

Thanks Walter! 

This helps a lot. 

[Oliver Siebenmarck _Polymetis Apps_]

Hi @Morayo Bamidele ,

That does sound weird, but different teams have different ways of working so maybe there's a reason for why your new team has things set up this way. Still, let's look at how this might have been done:

1. Why is each board showing me a different backlog size

Each board is populated by a filter (ie a JQL query) that selects which issue to show. Most likely, these boards use different filters. You can check that by going to "Board Settings" -> "General"; the filter used is named and linked there.

2. Why are two boards showing issues which are in the in progress and done statuses 

Boards do not really care about issues being done or not, it's all configurable. In the settings of each board, you can go to "Columns" where you match different issue states to columns on the board.

3. How do I fix this?

My guess is that you boards use different filters and thus display different issues. Additionally, I guess someone mapped the DONE status to the Backlog, which is weird but possible. Fixing this would involve going to the settings of each board and checking what's going on and mapping DONE states to the Done column. 

Hope that helps,
 Oliver

[M B]

Thanks Oliver! 

Very helpful