Using "Resolved" state plus resolution = Complete

[Doran Sheftall]

Hi JIRA Users!

I posed this query to JIRA Support, but they were unable to find a direct resolution/answer. So upon their suggestion, I posing it to you wonderful people:

I'd like to know how I can use resolutions to indicate completion, in addition to the "Closed" state. For example, status "Resolved" and resolution "Verified" would also be considered Complete, while "Resolved" / "Verified" would not. As you see, while I do not want to indicate anything in the "Resolved" state as completed, it coupled with the "Verfied" resolution would indicate completion.

This is important for my company and possibly other Agile teams, where stories, tasks, etc. go through a more strict QA process. For example, a developer would place a ticket "Resolved"/'Fixed" when development was completed, QA personnel would place it "Resolved"/"Verified" when successfully tested and the PO would close the ticket when validated. The issue is with our Sprint metrics. I'd like to use the Agile dashboard item to help understand completion/progress throughout the sprint at a glance. But this is not possible since JIRA items are not "Closed" until validation at the end of the sprint.

Any help or suggestions are welcome! Thanks!

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Accepted solution]

It sounds to me like you need to stop using resolution. Resolution is seen by Jira as a boolean flag, either it's unresolved or it's resolved.

Greenhopper used to let you define columns by status AND resolution, but frankly, that was a clunky mess and I'm personally glad it's been binned. I think you're going in that direction too.

The problem here is that you've got more than one defintion of "done", and I'm afraid that simply doesn't work. Just because a developer says it's done when they finish coding and unit test. A tester doesn't see that as done until they've passed all the tests. End users don't see it as done until the fix is in production.

A partial workaround is to

1) Decide where you want Jira to represent a universally acceptable "done" state is, and build it into the workflow, so that resolution is ONLY set at that point. It should be determined by how you want your boards to accumulate completion metrics.

2) Use another field to indicate "done" to various people, and set it automatically in the workflow. I've done this a few times and (for want of a better phrase) used "Relative status" or "meta status" to show it. For a simple use case, it's set to "with developer", "with tester", "needs deployment" and "done", depending on where the issue is in the workflow. It's really less than ideal though, because you still have to fiddle with filters to use it meaningfully and it doesn't flow into statistics at all.

This is just one approach, and I'm keen to see if anyone else here has others, as I feel that one to be clunky too (what Jira really needs is a "meta status" for groups of status, and those to determine "done" by who is looking at them. I've yet to see any tool do this, it's not just a Jira flaw. Some have had a bit of a stab at it, but it seems any tool with "Agile" label stuck on it simply don't do it - they all want you to have a single fixed definition of done. At least Jira has the flexibility to let me cobble *something* together)

[Aseem Parikh]

For example, status "Resolved" and resolution "Verified" would also be considered Complete, while "Resolved" / "Verified" would not.

Maybe it's just the fact that I haven't had my morning coffee yet...but I don't understand what you're trying to say here... I assume that instead of the second "Verified", you mean "Fixed"?