How to treat multiple columns as "Completed" for Sprint Reporting?

[jiyum0618]

I understand that Jira typically treats the rightmost column as the definitive "Complete" state. And two columns to the left of my rightmost column are marked as done.

However, my team’s workflow requires two different columns to be treated as fully closed: "Release" and "Deferred." Since both states mean the task is finished from a sprint perspective, we need Jira to treat issues in both columns as "Completed" so they don't roll over to the next sprint.

I have two specific questions:

1. Is it possible to assign the "Completed" checklist logic to multiple columns? How can I configure the Board Settings so that Deferred tasks are also excluded from rollover and included in "Completed" reporting metrics?

2. What is the functional difference between the two columns (with green checks) and the rightmost one?'

[Trudy Claspill]

Hello @jiyum0618 

Welcome to the Atlassian community.

The answer to your first question is that it cannot be done. You can't configure Jira to recognize more than the rightmost column as the indicator for work being "completed" in the sprint.

For your second question the functional differences are what will be considered "completed" in the sprint when working with a scrum board.

If you want the work in the Deferred and Released statuses to be considered complete in the sprint then you will need to remap those statuses to both be in the rightmost column of the scrum board.

Why do you need to have those as separate columns?

[jiyum0618]

Thank you for the reply!

Regarding my second question, I’d like to dig a bit deeper.

I’ve confirmed that even if a column is "Marked as Done" (with the green checkmark), Jira does not count those tasks as completed in Burndown or Burnup charts unless they are in the rightmost column. They also still roll over to the next sprint as incomplete items.

So, my question is: What is the actual functional purpose of having "Done" category columns to the left of the rightmost one? If they don’t contribute to sprint statistics (Velocity, Burndown) and don’t prevent rollover, are they essentially just "In Progress" columns with a different color?

To answer your question, the reason we want to keep them as separate columns is for visual clarity. "Released" means the feature is live, while "Deferred" means the task is intentionally postponed and closed for this sprint. We want to see the distinction at a glance on the board, but still both should not roll over to the next sprint.

[Trudy Claspill]

Typically when an issue is moved to a green status (a status value that is part of the Done Status Category) then the Resolution field is also set. The Resolution field, rather than the Status field, is used in the Created vs. Resolved reports. In a Team Managed project the setting of the Resolution field is automatic and could not be applied to an In Progress status.

It is possible that a team may want to consider an issue Resolved for purposes of such a report while not considering it "complete" for the sprint.

I have not been involved in a business process where that distinction needed to be made.

Nor have I been involved in a Jira use case where the team insisted on having each such "done" status in a separate column. 

A work around for seeing which issues are in different "done" statuses is to create custom filters to display just the issues in the Released status or the Deferred status while those are mapped to the rightmost column.

[Danut M _StonikByte_]

Hi @jiyum0618,

As previously explained, one possible solution would be to modify the dashboard and map all “Done” statuses (including Release and Deferred) to the right-most column.

If modifying your agile board is not an option, an alternative would be to look for a plugin (app) on the Atlassian Marketplace that supports sprint or project reporting and allows you to define specific columns or statuses as “Done.”

If you want to try a plugin, our Great Gadgets app offers all you need: sprint burndown/burnup, sprint report, team velocity, release burndown and more - all of them allows you to specify custom done statuses.

In the gadget settings you can specify the statuses to be considered done.

Hope this helps. If you have questions or need any help, please contact our team at support@stonikbyte.com. 

Danut