Why can i separate tasks from a story if they are all one unit of work?

Question

I'm confused on why i can move tasks accross the kanban board while the story they belong to stays behind.  I don't think it makes sense to be able to drag tasks accross the board so there status changes, I should only be able to drag the entire story.  Otherwise it makes things confusing, someone please explain the benefit that I am not seeing.

Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Answer

The reason it's possible is simple - it makes perfect sense to have parts of a story in different status.  Consider a story like "build a house".  The sub-tasks of foundations, structure, roof, internal walls, etc etc etc are almost always going to have different status.  The foundations can be "done", where the main story of "house" is just "in progress" and the roof is "not started"

There are cases where it does not make sense, and some logical rules that are not enforced by default, but they're business rules that you have to implement for yourself.  (JIRA runs on a computer, it does not understand that a sub-task should not be allowed to go to "in progress" until the parent issue is "authorised" - you have to tell it to work that way)

Steven F Behnke · Answer

Consider adding Swimlanes By Story. This allows the Story to become a lane, and JIRA will ask you if you want to close it out once all issuetypes are done.

Or add a post-function to transition the parent when all subtasks are done.