Relationship between Releases and StatusCategory

[Alain BEAULIEU]

We have the following workflow (columns - Kanban):

TODO | IN DEV | REVIEW | TESTS | INTEGRATION | UAT | DONE

When tickets reach the UAT column, we consider them done. The code has been integrated with the master branch. If UAT tests find a bug, we open a new ticket which starts over.

For a reason specific to our workflow, we sometimes release a version even though tickets are still in UAT testing. When we do that, of course Jira asks us what to do with the tickets that are still in progress. Normally we tell it to update the FixVersion to the next one but for the tickets still in UAT, we want the release process to skip them. Since the ticket have already been integrated into a given version, we don't want Jira to change the version because that would be wrong. The tickets would have been integrated into version n when in fact the ticket would say version n+1.

So in an effort to accomodate this, I (as Jira Admin) have changed the StatusCategory of the status behind the UAT column to DONE (green), hoping that when I release a version, Jira would update the FixVersion of all the tickets in the board to the next version EXCEPT the ones still in UAT, since they are in the DONE StatusCategory. That doesn't work. Jira still updates the version on these tickets.

I there a way to achieve what I want or I'm out of luck?

Thanks.

[Walter Buggenhout · Accepted solution]

Hi @Alain BEAULIEU ,

Regardless of what your process looks like, Jira only considers tickets in a board as done when they are in the rightmost column of your board. That is almost certainly not the case for your tickets in UAT status. And so, when you release from the board, these issues will never be considered done.

To answer the title of your question: there is no relationship between releases and statusCategory. The only element to consider is that rightmost board column.

Just looking at your process, if you actually release the work that is still in UAT, you are either taking the risk of releasing untested work or your UAT people are not updating their issues in time. If it is the first, that seems pretty awkward to me (no offense), if it is the second, it would probably be a better option to explicitly move these items into the rightmost column of your board (while maybe adding a comment or a label to them) before you actually release. In that case you avoid the erroneous update of the version in Jira while still keeping track that something odd happened with these specific issues.

Hope this helps!

[Alain BEAULIEU]

Thanks @Walter Buggenhout . I like your explanation of "rightmost column". I'll just stop hoping for a solution now. As to our process, you're right, and I'm working on that. ;)  (Agile Coach here). But, one thing at a time.