Jira Status Categories are defined different in Jira Scrum Board vs Jira Plans

[Harvindar Singh]

In Jira Plans, the summary provided of the Sprint ticket status is per below i.e. organised into Categories for TO DO, IN PROGRESS, DONE.

This is per the Status Categories defined in Jira Plans as indicated below:





However the Scrum Board which is the Issue Source for the Jira Plan defines it differently.
For e.g. category of "Not started" only accounts for tickets where Status = Backlog.

The mis-alignment of the Status Categories between the Jira Scrum Board and Jira Plans is causing confusion and making it more difficult to adopt Jira Plans by the teams here.

[Harvindar Singh]

Regarding the swim lane comment, I think you are referring to the board Workflow columns instead of the swim lanes.

Below is my current Scrum Board workflow columns.
For e.g. Status = ANALYSIS is in the 3rd column and when I moved it to the first column, the Scrum Board showed different numbers, proving your point.

As such, I am assuming for the Scrum Board the following is true but kindly confirm thanks.

- First column mapped to Status Category = To Do

- All middle columns map to Status Category = In Progress

- Last columns maps to Status Category = Done.

Query - since the Scrum Board is the Issue Source for the Jira Plan, why doesn't Jira Plan use the Status Categories from the Scrum Board instead of its own default?

[Vishal Biyani]

@Harvindar Singh 

In JIRA SCRUM board, most likely you have not included the required statues in the swimlane, creating the confusion. 

Can you review and ensure that statuses are mapped properly in the defined columns?

Also, JIRA categories all status in three categories - To Do, In Progress, Done depending on how these statuses are set in the workflow.

[Vishal Biyani]

@Harvindar Singh 

The columns in boar are defined manually. These don't get mapped to To Do, In Progress, Done categories. 

When statuses are added in JIRA Workflow, then based on the category defined by end user (Jira Admin), these Worksflow status get mapped to To Do, In Progress, Done categories.

The purpose of Boards is to visualize the flow of issues, how many issues are in what status etc.

Boards and JIRA Plans shouldn't be mixed up with each other.

[Harvindar Singh]

Jira Status Categories for Scrum Boards are implied by their column location in the workflow. Below link mentions this and screenshot below:
https://support.atlassian.com/jira-software-cloud/docs/configure-columns/

Jira Scrum Boards use the Status Categories of NOT STARTED, IN PROGRESS, COMPLETED

based off these screenshots from the board's backlog below:

Jira Plan defines it Status Categories by default as TO DO, IN PROGRESS, DONE as indicated in screenshot below:

Due to the difference in the mapping between ticket status and Status Categories between Scrum Boards and Jira Plans, the number of tickets reported per category can be different.

My question remains
- Since the Scrum Board is the Issue Source for the Jira Plan, why doesn't Jira Plan use the Status Categories from the Scrum Board instead of its own default? This would create alignment between the two. The ticket totals for each Status Category would then also be the same. Per the last screenshot above, Jira Plan has TO DO at 38.5 points as it includes ANALYSIS status as well; this creates confusion with the team which considers ANALYSIS to be in the IN PROGRESS status category.
- Also the different terminology used for the Status Categories for e.g. NOT STARTED vs TO DO between the board and the plan.

[Vishal Biyani]

@Harvindar Singh 

This is as per my understanding.

When a status is created, it has to be categorized into one of JIRA defined category i.e., To Do, In Progress, Done. You can use JQL to query based on say 

project = TEST and statusCategory = "In Progress"

There can be multiple status that can be mapped to either of To Do, In Progress, Done. However, one status can't have two categories.

In Scrum board, multiple columns can be added not just (To Do, In Progress, Done). The right most column can have more than one status. When completing the sprint, if all issues are present in one of the status that is on the right most column, then Jira will consider all the issues as Done.

Given that statusCategory is one of To Do, In Progress, Done and all the scrum board columns (more than 3 columns also) can have statuses that map to either of the one statusCategory.

Therefore, it is not logical for Jira plans to align with scrum board columns as every user will have their own number of columns with different status.

[Harvindar Singh]

Jira Plans uses the Scrum Boards as its Issue source so it has the customised mappings that teams create IE it has this information but is not using it. These customised mappings change the Status Category a Status belongs to by default.
In the example below, the Scrum Board columns have the Status=ANALYSIS in a "In Progress" (Blue) column. The team has decided that this status should be considered as "In Progress" work.

Since Jira Plan does not use this customised mapping, there is a mis-alignment between Scrum Board and Jira Plan reporting the totals below:

- Scrum Board: TODO=6, IN PROGRESS=32.5, DONE=6

- Jira Plan = TODO=32.5, IN PROGRESS=0, DONE=6



Scrum Board column definition with Status=ANALYSIS in a "In Progress" blue column:


As such I consider my questions still open.