Why do the 'Not Started', 'In Progress' and 'Completed' numbers in the backlog not add up?

[Stephen Hill]

Forgive the rather large image, but hopefully you'll be able to see that the backlog view says that 40 story points are 'In Progress' but if you look at the stories that have a status of 'In Progress'.... there's only 6 points. That's a rather large discrepancy!

[Bill Sheboy · Accepted solution]

Hi @Stephen Hill -- Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

My understanding of Jira Scrum boards and backlogs is related to how the status values are mapped to the columns of the board:

• all status values mapped to the first column count towards "to do", or not started yet
• all status values mapped to the last column count towards "done", or completed for the sprint
• all others in the middle count toward "in progress"

If you check your board layout, I hypothesize the other status values you show are mapped to columns in the middle of the board.

Kind regards,
Bill

[Stephen Hill]

Thanks @Bill Sheboy that seems to make sense, and here is my board....

So it looks like the 'Awaiting Test' and 'Blocked' columns being in blue means that they are 'In Progress'?

That's despite the individual statuses underneath them being 'To Do' ones. How can I change this?

[Bill Sheboy]

Correct.  For several things like this, the Status Category for the Status does not impact the behavior.  There is no way to fix this for that built-in feature where the Story Points are summed in the backlog.

This inconsistency with the Status Category behavior creates several challenges / limitations, particularly for Kanban boards.  There have been several open suggestions to make this more configurable over the years, such as this one:

https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRACLOUD-94997

For your specific scenario, some workarounds would be using dashboard gadgets to create the counts, investigating marketplace apps, or using an automation rule for a quick-report.

[Stephen Hill]

Ah well that's very disappointing... I'll have to let our team know not to give too much credit to these numbers as they technically won't be true. Thanks for your help @Bill Sheboy

[arielei]

Hello @Stephen Hill 

1. Not Started (To Do/Backlog):

• Story points are assigned to issues in the backlog or "To Do" column. 
• These points represent the estimated effort for the issue. 
• Jira automatically calculates the total story points for all issues in the "Not Started" status (or equivalent) based on their assigned values. 

2. In Progress:

• As issues move into the "In Progress" status, their assigned story points remain the same.
• Jira continues to track the total story points for all issues in "In Progress".
• This provides a running total of the effort being actively worked on in the sprint. 

3. Done:

• When an issue is moved to the "Done" status, its story points are included in the total for completed work. 
• The total story points in "Done" represent the completed effort for the sprint. 
• Jira calculates the velocity by tracking how many story points are completed each sprint.