Close a sprint with open Sub Tasks

[Trena Norcia]

We may not be using Jira in it's true designed fashion (but I am sure others are having this same issue?)  I cannot close a sprint with open subtasks?  They need to move to the next sprint, is there a workaround for this or is there a way to allow subtasks to stop preventing the sprint from closing? 

Jira is an awesome product and we love it, we just need to understand how to address certain issues we encounter.  Thanks in advance for helping out with this one.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Sub-tasks are not sprint items, they are parts of a Story/issue, and it's those that are sprint items.

This error message happens when you've got into an illogical position, where an item is said to be "done", even when parts of it are still flagged as "not done".  This makes no sense, and Jira can't know how to handle it.

So, the simple "fix" for this - reopen the parent issue.  It's not done, it has parts that are not done, so by definition it can't be.  Once re-opened, it will be able to go into the next sprint, taking all its sub-tasks with it.

[javiercab]

Hello Nic,

I am trying to understand the fix.

I have a Sprint to close with Subtasks that are parts of User Stories; some subtasks are To-Do status, some of them In Progress, and the rest are Done.

What you are sugesting is:

1. Before closing the Sprint; move all the Subtasks and Stories to the status Done

2. Close the Sprint

3. Reopen the Stories and Subtasks

Is that correct?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

No, absolutely not.

Your stories are not done if the have open subtasks.  Reopen the story to correct the mistake and then close the sprint.

[Perry Tancredi]

I case anyone sees this and it doesn't fix the issue, the actual fix appears to be in the edit and Nic's comment above on Jan 24, 2022

[Chris Buzon]

I just ran into a scenario where things acted oddly - and after a bit of trial and error I found a solution.  

My team has a status of "Won't Do" (a Done status category). It automatically applies a resolution of won't do as well using a post-function. Won't do status is really just a shortcut for our teams, and it allows us to easily revisit those tickets in retro. The 'proper' way to do this would be use to Done/Won't Do (status/resolution), but some teams like the shortcut because they're not perfect at remember to add any resolutions...

A few moments ago a scrum master got an error message saying that they had open subtasks in their sprint in 2 tickets - those ticket are closed as Done, but they had a couple subtasks in each that were deemed not required - so they had a status/resolution of Won't do/Won 't do.  To me they appear as done (green), but Jira disagreed.

After some trial and error I found that if I converted those Won't Do/Won't Do subtasks to issues (tasks in this case) the error message went away.  


UPDATE:  The actual issue is that Jira recognizes DONE as the far-right column (status/resolution don't matter). The 'Won't Do" status was not mapped to the board, so the board doesn't recognize them as Done.  
Solution: Map the Won't Do  (or whatever) status to the far fight column on your board (even temporarily).  

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Ah, you just edited, I was just about to post something about status not being directly relevant, it only looks at the last column, so some mapping in there will probably be the right thing to do!

[Chris Buzon]

I knew that the board needed done on the far-right side, but this is one of the few places I've actually seen why it needs that.

Everywhere I have worked just sorta ignored this requirement - and generally speaking just butchered their sprints (and all the reports/metrics) as a result - this exercise has cleared a lot of stuff up for me. 

Also I know now I don't need to do the gross-subtask-ssue-convert solution (which is still a question for me, I don't see why THAT worked when their status didn't change, just the issue type...).

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

In my answer, I burbled a bit about issues that are in a broken state - they're in a "done" status, but can't be "done" because they have open sub-tasks.

If you convert the open sub-tasks to issues, then the problem goes away, because the done on the issue is now consistent.

[Alfiia Bitkulova]

Each time I want to complete the sprint which had tasks with subtasks having a resolution "Won't do", Jira won't let me.

I use a workaround - close the subtask again as a duplicate, but this is very annoying to not be able to simply complete the sprint with one click.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

That's not a "work around", it's a complete botch and it's lying about your work.

There is nothing to work around here, you should stop marking issues done when they have incomplete sub-tasks.

[Alfiia Bitkulova]

This is very unfair what you are writing. If one/more than one subtask is closed as Won't do since it's decided to not proceed with it, and all the rest are done, why is it still considered a "not finished task"? 

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Because you are not saying "won't do" is "done".  Your "won't do" status currently means "the sub-task is not complete as far as this team is concerned", so of course, the parent issue can't be complete, because part of it is not.

The "work around" you should be using is to "use Jira as intended" - map your "won't do" status into the last column on the board, to show "the team does not need to do anything more with this"