Need to assign work marked as "Done" to an active sprint

Question

Bear with me. I know that isn't supported, at least by default. But...

I have a board that will be used for a single project that will last four month (Nov through Feb). We have been completing work on that project during the last month. Some is done, some in progress, etc. But we never actually started a sprint (were working in a Kanban frame). I have been asked to develop a burndown chart for the entire project. My two options are:

* Build it by hand using Excel or something
* Use a scrum board in Jira to view the work and build a sprint from today through the end of the project (some time in Feb). Will work nicely moving forward, but will show none of the work completed so far.
* Use a scrum board in Jira to view the work and build a sprint from when we started through the end of the project. This will show the full timeline, but will have a month of no progress, since again, the Done items are already done.

I considered marking the Done items to "In Progress", assign them to the sprint, and then mark them as Done, but then I lose the original done date, which from what I have read can't be modified.

I really would prefer to use Jira so I don't have to manually update a spreadsheet with progress.

Any suggestions?

Dan -minware- · Answer

Disclaimer: 3rd party marketplace partner

@hawsd Is this a one-time use report or ongoing? We can help at minware - it's a paid solution but it would be substantially easier than your manual option and you won't need to change the workflow at all.

We offer a free trial if you want to check it out / get a protype up and running.

Walter Buggenhout · Answer

Hi @hawsd and welcome to the Community!

If you started the project in November, then I am quite sure what was completed already is just a limited amount of work. As good advice: let it be. You did not start a sprint at first - that is what you did for starters.

If you have been tracking your work so far in a kanban board, you will see that you have 2 reports available:

* A cumulative flow chart: this shows how and when issues progressed through your workflow, so it will show how and when issues were resolved.
* A control chart: this report shows the lead and cycle times of work through your process.

If you want to start planning sprints now, add a scrum board to your project today and start planning your first sprint. Everything from now on will be traceable going forward with proper sprint reports.

For past work: let it be. If you want to mark a sprint as completed, you will need to hit the complete sprint button in that sprint. Jira uses the system date of that event as the end date of the sprint, so you won't be able to pretend you were doing sprints a month ago.

When you document your project, just add a note that you decided to start using sprints in December and that no sprint data was available before you made that decision.

On a final note. If you want to create a burndown of your project, you can still create one / more versions (releases) in your project and associate issues with them using the fix version field. Versions do have a Version Report, as well as a Release Burndown, accessible from your board's report section (when using sprints). This might help you look at your data differently as well and even divide your projects into smaller milestones.

Hope this helps!

hawsd · Answer

I like the thoughts. Smaller sprints are good. But doesn't handle my issue. Though I don't understand what you mean by complexity.

Think of this as a board tracking the work a community of practice might do. So every couple of weeks, each person might have a couple of hours of work to do on any given task. They have full time jobs and this is a secondary priority. To some extent, a bi-weekly meeting is actually what most teams would consider their "daily scrum". So the long term picture will be more appropriate. Not a perfect metaphor, but helps explain why it matters.

So the scenario is detailed, but the problem is straightforward. Is there any way to add a Done item to a sprint that is currently running or one that I can start with a start date in the past? If neither of those work and there are no other ideas, I have to use an excel chart or something.