Sprint Board Reporting - reporting status of a specific data field that is held in >1 Story

[Andrew Wilks]

Currently we have Sprint Board 'A' - which contains a Story ticket for each Requirement and circa 10-15 sub-tasks associated to it.  Each subtask tracks the production of an artefact and or completion of an activity required to delivery the sprint goals.  Across the project we are creating 100's of tickets - but we are able to monitor & report on their progress via a series of JQLs  in Confluence - so all is good.

There is an ask for us to assess how we can reduce the number of sub-task tickets that are created  - without losing our ability to monitor.

A thought is, 

We create a single Story ticket for each Requirement due delivery and, within that, have a series questions with a dropdown selection e.g.

Has action A been completed?  

 - YES

 - NO

 - Not Required

This is repeated for each artefact/activity required AND replicated within each Story.

My query is.

Is it possible set a JQL query which checks each Story held within the sprint board and queries a defined activity within the Story?

i.e. Tickets where "Has action A been completed != YES"  - then present the results  - to  allow this to be reviewed and followed up?

Apologies for the long nature of the question but buy JQL skills have been exhausted and I thinking this is not possible!

[Bill Sheboy]

Hi @Andrew Wilks -- Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

You note this:

There is an ask for us to assess how we can reduce the number of sub-task tickets that are created  - without losing our ability to monitor.

What is the problem being solved by reducing the number of sub-tasks?  That is, "why" do that?  Knowing this may help the community to offer better suggestions or alternatives.

Jira is essentially a work-management tool, and your team seems to be using sub-tasks effectively to manage work.  Other methods can be used to reduce sub-task usage for your scenario, but they will likely have unintended consequences.  Understanding the problem being solved will help to understand that better.

Kind regards,
Bill

[Andrew Wilks]

Thanks for your response  - after reviewing your counter questions and doing some prototype testing - we have determined that a review of the volume & necessity of subtasks we create rather than looking to replace all with a single ticket.

[Camilo Galleguillos]

Hi, @Andrew Wilks

Yes, what you suggest is possible by using custom fields. You could set a radio select or dropdown single select custom field for each of these mentioned stages, and then create a JQL query looking for the corresponding values, for example:

project = TEST and "Action A" in ("Yes", "Not required")
project = TEST and "Action A" in ("No")
project = TEST and "Action A" not in ("Yes")

However, it would reduce the ability to track and report on the progress of such activities. I would recommend sticking to subtasks and finding other ways to tackle the problem of having too many subtasks. For example, you could refine the queries in boards and reports.

[Andrew Wilks]

Thanks for your response  - after doing some prototype testing of the various options  - we have determined that a review of the volume & necessity of subtasks we create rather than looking to replace all with a single ticket.