Why aren't changes to workflow reflected in sprint?

[Matt Richards]

I just updated a workflow. Specifically I changed the Category of four Statuses from "In Progress" to "Done". These edits are now live. When I view my workflow, the categories are correct. I have confirmed that the workflow is being used by the project in question.

When I view individual Stories, the Categories are correct. The problem is, when I look at the Sprint Report, the Stories that have Statuses which should now be considered "Done" as their Category, are still reported as being "In Progress".

https://sixcycle.atlassian.net/secure/RapidBoard.jspa?rapidView=3&projectKey=SCB&view=reporting&chart=sprintRetrospective&sprint=152

Also, when I look at the Category totals represented by the gray, blue and green icons at the top of the sprint on the Backlog page, the totals are incorrect. The point values that should be Done are shown as In Progress.

Why haven't the changes that I made to my workflow affected this sprint?

NOTE: It is the current sprint. I'm wondering if workflow changes aren't applied to the current sprint, and my changes will be applied to the next sprint.

[Bill Sheboy]

Hi @Matt Richards 

I think you may be correct that changing the status category of a status to "Done", for an item which is already in that status, may not be reflected. Frankly, I am surprised if it does work that way as in many other ways Jira does not appear to accurately reflect what the workflow *was* at a point it time; instead it does *now*.

Have you tried to move an issue backwards in flow and then forward again to the status?  That may correct the measures.

Best regards,
Bill

[Matt Richards]

Hi Bill,

I have created an entirely new issue and moved it through the workflow to test the thinking that pre-existing issues were not updated by the change to the workflow, and the new issue is also not reflected properly in the story point totals or the sprint report. So, it would appear as though the problem is not "issue-based" and may have more to do somehow with the relationship between the workflow and the sprint as a whole. 

[Matt Richards]

As a follow up... I also created an entirely new sprint to see if the workflow changes would be honored there, and they are not. To be honest, I thought they would be!

At this point I'm wondering if there is some other configuration change that needs to be made outside of the workflow. 

[Matt Richards]

I've also just noticed that Columns in my "Column management" view which contain only statuses with the "Done" category are still showing the blue "In Progress" color. Might there be a column setting that needs to be updated? 

[Bill Sheboy]

Matt, that sounds like the status category did not change as you planned.  Where did you attempt to change the values?

[Matt Richards]

The status category did change. It shows up correctly when I return to the workflow, and the status colors are correct wherever they are viewed. 

I just got a disappointing response from Atlassian support (as usual). See below. It would seem as though, despite giving us the ability to map categories to statuses, the act of doing so does not impact the sprint reporting. Moreover, despite giving us the ability to create multiple columns and map statuses to those columns, Atlassian has decided for us that the first column always means To Do, all the ones in the middle mean In Progress and the last column means Done. 

Why bother providing the configurability if it isn't factored into all the related functionality? I honestly have no idea what configuring categories for statuses is for, if not to determine which statuses are REPORTED as being To Do, In Progress or Done. 

The more I use Jira the more I want to use something else.

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Jira Software Reports do not consider the status category in the workflow as the parameter for the category in the report. Instead, it considers how the statuses are mapped in your board columns. Allow me to better explain it:

Category "To Do" (Grey color) - The report considers as "To Do" all the Stories in which statuses are mapped to the first column of the board (leftmost column).

Category "In Progress" (Blue column) - Consider all the issues in which statuses are mapped to the columns between the first and last one.

Category "Done" (Green Column) - Consider all the issues in which statuses are mapped to the last column of the board (rightmost column).

[Bill Sheboy]

I guess that explains part of it.

One value of having the status categories is to roll-up status across multiple teams' projects and workflows.  For example, say you wanted to track a larger initiative spanning teams, and those teams had very different workflows.  Using status category, you could quickly summarize ToDo, In Progress, and Done across them all...without a mapping exercise to figure how which status is which.

Regarding the reporting error, you may want to read over the documentation on the specific sprint report(s) to see *when* things are logged as done for reporting: immediately or when the sprint finishes.  For example, velocity doesn't exist until the sprint is completed. Still, if you move issues to the last column it would seem the "done" number of story points/issues would change.  That might be a good follow-up for support if you cannot see why from their explanation.

Thanks,

Bill

[Matt Richards]

Thanks for your thoughts, Bill. 

Given what Atlassian has told me about how status works, I'm not sure that I understand how you can use status category to understand status. My current understanding is that if you have items with a status that has a category of "Done", but it is not in the final column, it will not be reported as "Done". Rather, it will be reported as "In Progress". 

[Bill Sheboy]

Yes, that is correct for the built-in reports.  If you use filtering on status category, and show on a dashboard gadget or export, I believe you would get what you are expecting.

__Bill