Why do cancelled issues show up on sprint report as "completed"?

[Greg Mueller]

Why would anyone consider them completed or want a report including them with issues actually worked and completed?

[Trudy Claspill]

Hello @Greg Mueller 

Cancelled issues show up in the report because Jira groups issues by Status Category. Those Status Categories are:

To Do

In Progress

Done

Every specific Status value belongs to one of those categories. Status values are customizable to have any name. Jira doesn't have native functionality based on Status value names, but rather based on Status Categories (plus, in some cases, whether or not a value has been added to the Resolution field).

As you can see, there is no special distinction for "cancelled" at the Status Category level, so Jira has no special functionality to apply when the status of an issue is "Cancelled".

[Greg Mueller]

Ok, so that begs the question, what do people typically do with cancelled items? How do they track those ? This need has to be common to every team who uses Jira. 

[Bill Sheboy]

Hi @Greg Mueller 

Yes, and...to Trudy's ideas, and as an answer to your question, "what do people typically do with cancelled items":

It depends upon the team and org.

Let's say a team has a Cancelled status, and they want those items not to be reported upon.  The board filter could be updated to exclude Cancelled status, and so when something moves to Cancelled it is not reported upon...for some things. 

They could instead intentionally remove the item from a sprint to show the scope change, and then abandon the item.

Others may note that some work happened before an item was Cancelled.  In that case, they may leave the item as is in the sprint, but perhaps first alter its estimation value to reflect delivery was halted.

Kind regards,
Bill

[Greg Mueller]

Thanks Bill!  

On another thread, I was told that updating story points mid-sprint wont change sprint scope on the report... but will it?

[Bill Sheboy]

Yes, it will...and perhaps that is okay for how a team works. 

What Atlassian calls "commitment" for sprints remains the same but the burn charts and other reporting will show the change.

For myself and teams I have helped, we do nothing for cancelled items.  We chalk it up to learning and discuss it in the retrospective: Well, something unusual happened.  What changed in our goal, execution, or in our sprint planning that we could do better next time?

[Greg Mueller]

Meaning you dont change the status?  

[Trudy Claspill]

@Greg Mueller 

On another thread, I was told that updating story points mid-sprint wont change sprint scope on the report... but will it?

If you are referring to my answer on your other post here I did not say it would not change the "scope" of the sprint. I actually said:

The initial story points total at the beginning of a sprint will not be changed by changing the story point values during the sprint.

The initial story points and scope change are not the same thing.

[Bill Sheboy]

Greg, we do update the status to "done", ensuring the issues complete in the sprint and do not carry-over.  Some teams use a checkbox field to indicate "Abandoned", adding a comment to describe why-abandoned, and this helps with reporting in the future.

[Greg Mueller]

So, it inflates the work showing completed in the sprint?  But it's uncommon enough that you accept the inaccuracy?  

[Bill Sheboy]

Yes, and...Some teams exclude issues with an Abandoned field set using the board filter, as that will immediately remove them from the board and reporting, even though they finish with the sprint.  That is the Jira Cloud behavior; I do not know if that is the same for Jira Data Center.