Is there a way to show if a subtask was completed in a previous sprint?

[hvdploeg]

Basically, we don't always complete all subtasks of a story within a sprint. So we add the story to the next sprint, but now we can't (easily) see which subtasks were done in the current sprint and which ones where already completed when we started the sprint.

Is there a way to show if a subtask was completed in a previous sprint? (like with a setting or a plugin perhaps?)

[Ste Wright · Accepted solution]

Hi @hvdploeg

There isn't in standard Jira.

I see this as common practice though - a sprint tracks the completion of stories. A story can be broken into multiple sub-tasks - but even if you complete half those sub-tasks in a sprint, the whole story isn't complete. This means the whole story (including all its sub-tasks) move into the next sprint.

This is why sub-tasks can't be added to a sprint by themselves, nor show up in the sprint report. 

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I couldn't locate an app for this - but I did manage to do something using JQL. So for example:

Sprint in closedSprints() and (Sprint in futureSprints() or Sprint in closedSprints()) and issuetype = Sub-task

^ This JQL provides you a list of sub-tasks where their parent story is in both a closed sprint and a future or active sprint. This provides you a view of the current status of those sub-tasks.

You could limit this to two specific sprints by getting their sprint IDs - such as:

Sprint = 10 and Sprint = 11 and issuetype = Sub-task

^ You can get their Sprint IDs from the sprint report - change the drop-down between sprints and the URL will change - take the ID from the end of the URL - &sprint=11

This doesn't give you a historic view but an active view of sub-task statuses when one sprint closes and another starts.

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If you wanted a historic view I think you'd need to use history searches - for example:

resolution was EMPTY during (2020-01-01, 2020-01-31) and resolution is not EMPTY

^ This provides me a list of issues which were incomplete between those two dates, but are now complete. You could change those dates to be a sprint to see issues which were not resolved prior to the sprint's closure.

See more information on history searching on this blog.

Ste

[hvdploeg]

Hi Stephen,

Thanks so much for taking the time to answer and come up with these queries!

I understand what you are saying. However, this is not about tracking outcome or anything. We just want to see this small bit of information on the active board issue cards (perhaps through greyed out text or something along those lines) because it helps us understand the contents of our sprint faster. Halfway through a sprint, looking at our board we will probably have several partially completed stories, including a couple of stories that came from the previous sprint. When you look at that situation, you can't differentiate between the two, they are presented as equal, but to us they are not. We generally prefer focusing on 'older' stories before taking on new ones, but in reality that's not always possible. Stories tend to drag along over several sprints when actually we need to get our act together and just finish them.

There are probably many solutions to tackle this problem, but for us the ideal solution would be some sort of indicator on the subtask issue card on the active board.

Either way, you answered my questions and then some, so thanks again for your time!

-HP