How do we make it so tasks in stories have to be completely sequentially?

[Riley McQuivey]

Each Work Item will be a User Story consisting of several tasks. User Stories/Tasks must be completed sequentially. Must wait for the entire
story to be Ready before beginning any work on the item. Jira rules should prevent us from grabbing a task unless the story is ready. 

I know a little but about linking items, but from my understanding that would have to be done with each new story. Is there any way to setup default rules so a story cannot be moved until everything in it is complete? 

We are also using "Automation for Jira" if there is a way to do it that way. 

[Derek Fields _RightStar_ · Accepted solution]

I'm not sure I understand your use case. You can set a Condition on a transition in the User Story workflow that won't allow the transition until all sub-tasks have reached a particular status (e.g., Done). 

If you aren't using Subtasks on the User Stories, then you need a plugin to provide that same functionality on linked issues. Better practice is to use Subtasks to divide up the User Story into concrete implementation tasks that have to be completed before the User Story can be moved to the next status (e.g., from In Development to In QA)

[Riley McQuivey]

My bad I didn't explain it super well. I may have confused myself a bit as well, but I think I have a couple ideas from your reply. 

So for example, if I have a story in "In Dev" with 2 subtasks, the subtasks can be transitioned to "Ready for QA", but can not be moved to "QA" until the entire story is in "Ready for QA". 

So Sub-task 1 can only move so far until the story it was a part of is moved to a certain point as well.

Thank you for replying! 

[Derek Fields _RightStar_]

You will need a plugin to do this. Jira Workflow Toolbox has a condition that will prevent subtasks from transitioning unless their parent task is in a certain status. This is essentially the same as the built-in subtask condition, but reversed. 

[Riley McQuivey]

Awesome I will look into that. Thank you!

[Derek Fields _RightStar_]

Can you mark this as answered so that it doesn't keep showing up in the unanswered queue?