Issues on Jira

[Simon Sefilian]

1- What do you do to issues that need to be carried over to next sprint on Jira? Pull them in the next sprint log or create new stories? How can one track and know in how many sprints the story was built in?

2- Some columns on my active board, I can't pull issues or glitches under them (I have previously worked on the workflow and it was working fine, not sure if someone from the team made any changes). How can add "Categories" on the workflow (if this solves the issue)

3- Jira stories can be moved one status forward only (on my active board). Please can you advise why?

[Simon Sefilian · Accepted solution]

I did as you asked on the board but not sure what to change in the workflow

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

1. Take them into the next sprint (basically, don't have them in the last column on the board when you close it).  To know how many sprints it was in, look at the issue, the sprint field lists all past and present sprints.
2. Moving an issue from one column to another is actually a function of the workflow.  For a really simple case of a To-do column to an in-progress column, look at the underlying status - if To-do contains only the "new" status, and in-progress contains only the "in dev" status, then the workflow needs to have
   1. A transition from New to In dev
   2. Condition(s) that say you are allowed to perform the transition (no condition = you can do this move, there's no checks other than project permission to transition)
3. As per 2 - there's no transitions back in your workflow, or they are blocked by a condition

[Simon Sefilian]

P.S. Using Scrum and not Kanban board 

1- Noted. I clicked on the issue to check on the sprints history? I only see the current sprint they are in.

2 & 3 - I have customized a workflow with transitions, and published it which should mean that the board is based now on the updated workflow - how come I can only pull an issue to the column ahead, where are the conditions?

Thank you so much

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

1. That suggests the issue is only in one sprint.

2. You can only drag forwards in the columns because your worklow either doesn't have transitions to other places, or, if it does, they are protected with conditions (on the transition)

[Simon Sefilian]

I checked and:
1- all status have transitions in between
2- all transitions in the workflow are free from properties, Triggers, Conditions, Validators. All have Post Functions (5) though - not sure what that is

[Simon Sefilian]

Also the issue might be from "column management" - there are some issues here but I do not understand. Any way you would be able to help me with this?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Ok, the diagram shows that you do not have transitions between most status.  As you say "no conditions, only post functions (5 is standard for an uncustomised transition)", let's ignore them.

Your workflow has transitions

Create -> Backlog -> Analysis -> Development -> Testing -> UAT -> Done

Mostly a completely one-way linear workflow.  It does have two other transitions - you can go from Testing and UAT back to Development.

But there's no transtions from Backlog to Development/Testing/UAT/Done, and so-on.

Your column configuration then makes it worse, because "Development" is not mapped into any columns, you can't actually use Analysis -> Development, Testing -> Development or UAT -> Testing because there's no column for it.

[Simon Sefilian]

That is great, that you've noticed these points. I will try to sort them out now. Meanwhile, what would you advice me to do? Create transitions between all status? How do I do that? Thank you again

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

The quickest one to fix is mapping "development" into the right column on the board, so people can start moving through the workflow, it'll take only a minute to pop in and do that.

The rest of it is, yes, editing the workflow.

Before throwing yourself into it, have a think about exactly how you want it to work.  Do you really want "any status to any status"?  For example is UAT to backlog a valid thing to do in your process? (Not unusual to have "failed a UAT test, throw it back into the backlog so the scrum team can pick it up in the next sprint")   Or Done to Development? (Much less likely, you'd probably want to re-open stuff back to the backlog or analysis, so people can analyse why it's needed to be re-opened)

In other words, have a run through mapping your desired transitions, and then, yes, add them into the workflow.  You'll probably want to think about conditions too - would you want to allow anyone to throw something out of testing back into the backlog?  Maybe that should be only the team, and not the end-users who originally created the story?

Once you've mapped the from-to pairs, have a quick look at each status and how people get there.  You might well find, for example, that you have a transition from any status going into "done".  In which case, do not add a pile of separate transitions, add a "global" transition into "done" - it'll show as a small black box with "all" written in it, pointed to "done".  If you do decide "can go from any status to any other", you should also use "all", just having each status with a single All -> Status transition for each status!

[Simon Sefilian]

Is "Simplified Workflow" the name of the workflow chosen for the board? I have named my workflow "Scrum". When I click on "Simplified Workflow, I get the following error: "

There currently exists an active workflow scheme 'Y: Software Simplified Workflow Scheme'. This conflicts with the Software Simplified Workflow management. Please rename or remove the existing workflow scheme before attempting to convert project X 2021."

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Um, clicking "simplified workflow" has nothing to do with editing your workflow.

If you really do want to use a simplified workflow, then you'll need to rename the existing scheme to something else before simplifying again.

[Simon Sefilian]

I had some issues that now I cannot see on the board, 11 out of 15 of them. Not sure what I did. :/

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Ok, I'm assuming you've mapped "development" into the column by the same name?

So the next questions on "missing issues" are

• Are the missing issues in the current sprint?
• What type of issues are missing (I mean the "class" of issue in the hierarchy, not the actual issue type - are they at the Epic layer, Issue layer, or sub-tasks)?
• What is the board filter?  (You can see it in the board "general config" section, which is just off the top of the screen in the view of the column mappings you gave us earlier)

[Simon Sefilian]

1. Yes, in the current sprint 2. Issue layer 3. What should be the filter?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

I don't know what the filter should be, can you share what the board general config says it is?  (Feel free to scrub project names or other local data you don't want to share, we're only interested in the clauses, issue types and field selections)

[Simon Sefilian]

Filter: Organization's board

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

No, sorry, we need the actual JQL of the filter - it should be under the name of the filter.

[Simon Sefilian]

project = ORGANISATION ORDER BY Rank ASC

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Ok, so the three missing issues are in the project keyed "ORGANIZATION"  then?

[Simon Sefilian]

Yes, all the issues the present and missing ones "organisation" - XYZ num

[Simon Sefilian]

I can see all now and can move the issues to any status. Thank you