Splitting vs. Cloning

[Aimee Palmer]

I would like folks' opinions on situations when splitting an issue is better than cloning and vice versa.  What happens to the sprint report and team velocity in each instance?  thanks!

[Matt Robertson]

Hi Aimee,

We introduced splitting because cloning was really heavy weight and in planning meetings we often wanted to break stories into smaller pieces.   Under the hood splitting does an issue clone but it changes the summary and estimates to what you provide instead of what was in the original issue.

For the reports the cloned issue will have to same estimates (time spent, story points, whatever you're using) as the original issue.  Split issues will have the new estimates you put in.  Both split issues and cloned issues should show up in the same sprints and epics as the original issue.

[Aimee Palmer]

i like the concept of splitting vs. cloning but how do we ensure all the attachments and notes move with it? by checking 'include sprint values' or is that not an option.

my question on velocity is, if you split the issue and then mark the original issue as done, then the team will have those points in their velocity right?

thank you

[Matt Robertson]

When you split an issue the attachments and notes (we call them comments) don't get copied to the new issue. 

When you clone an issue you can check "Clone attachments" to move the attachments to the new issue, but there's no way to copy comments.

For velocity: Yep, when the original issue is marked as done the team will get those points included.

[Eric Raymond]

@Matt Robertson And there are plans to fix this and carry over the important comments?

[Matt Robertson]

Hi @Eric Raymond,

We don't have any plans to make changes to this feature.

[Eric Raymond]

This is sad.  There's so many parts of Jira that fail to cover common use cases  or work from one screen and are absent in another.  I know I'm venting in vain....

[Gooty]

Hi, 

Can we split the issues that are from previous sprints or current sprints?

[christine_stpierre]

Apparently only from the backlog, not in the sprint board