How to JQL issues that were in the backlog and transitioned to an open sprint?

[Gil]

Hi,

We're running two backlogs for the single project.

The actual jira backlog and then an MVP backlog where issues have higher priority that will most likely end up in a future sprint.

I'd like to have a JQL that can find me the issues that were in our MVP backlog and now have transitioned to our active sprint.

Additionally, if it's possible that the JQL will exclude issues that rolled over from a previous sprint.

Is it even possible?

[Andy Heinzer]

I think you could probably use either the JQL WAS or the CHANGED operators in order to figure this out.   However it would be dependent upon having a separate backlog status in your workflow from the other statuses in your sprint.

Out of the box, this isn't always the case.  In many times, moving issues from the backlog into the planning stages of a sprint doesn't actually transition the issue.  If that is the case here, then these historical JQL functions won't help much here because dragging issues from the backlog into a sprint isn't always transition them technically.

If you'd be willing to share with us the JQL filter used for both boards, and also let me know the different status that exist in the project/workflow in question (particularlly the statuses used for backlog), perhaps I can give you a more detailed JQL suggestion to try to find the issues you are looking for.

[Gil]

Hi Anderw, thanks for offering help.

The JQL for the scrum board is:

project = Tenessee AND status not in (Rejected) AND (sprint in openSprints() OR sprint in futureSprints() OR sprint = EMPTY) ORDER BY Rank ASC

the statuses we have are:

To Do, In Progress, In Dev, Blocked, Review, Ready to Test, In Testing, Done.

We have two backlogs. 1 - for non-prioritised items, 2- for prioritised items.

We pull from backlog 2 to a planned sprint (not active yet)

We close the active sprint and roll over the remaining stories to the planned sprint.

We open/start the planned sprint, which then becomes the active sprint.

Is that enough?

[Andy Heinzer]

From what I can see so far, it doesn't look like we can search in JQL for historical info here that would help.    Your statuses don't appear to have a "Backlog" and a "Selected for Development" type status.    I was thinking that if you were using a Kanban board, you could enable the Kanplan feature in Jira Software.  This helps to separate your issues in your backlog to only show those issues that have a particular status, like Backlog.  

If you were to setup your board like this, then the act of moving issues from the backlog into the active sprint would change the status of the issues when you do.

From looking back at the scrum vs kanban boards, I don't think this can be done in a scrum board.  There is no clear separation of issue status between moving issues between the backlog and the sprint in a Scrum type board.

Since the historical fields we can search for in JQL is limited:

(Note: This operator can be used with the Assignee, Fix Version, Priority, Reporter, Resolution, and Status fields only.)

There is no way that I can see to clearly do what you want in a scrum board as is.   If we could search historical sprint field values in JQL, then perhaps this would be possible. 

[Gil]

Hi @Andy Heinzer thanks for looking into it.

We might switch to a kanban in the future.

I wish there was a field that could tell of any change that happened with a jira story in an easy way.

I'll look for other ways to sort this out.

Thank you.