What is Status Category?

Difference between JIRA's Status Category, Status and Resolution

Jira has 4 fields that are often confused

1. Status Category: Groups various statuses into broader categories to provide a quick overview of a task's state. Has To Do, In Progress, and Done. These are used to uniformly understand the phase of a task across different projects.

2. Status: Describes the specific stage a task is in within its lifecycle. Examples include In Progress, In Review, QA, Closed. Each status belongs to one of the status categories, helping to map more detailed stages to simpler groupings.

3. Resolution: Indicates the final outcome of a task once it is closed. It explains why a task was closed, with options like Done, Won't Do, Duplicate. This field is typically empty while a task is still open or in progress.

4. Column: Represents a visual component on a board (like in Kanban or Scrum boards) that correlates to task status. Columns organize tasks visually by status, facilitating a clearer view of workflow and progress through statuses like To Do, Doing, Done.

Below is an example board reflecting different Status Categories, Statuses and Columns.

Status Categories:

• To Do (gray)

• In Progress (blue)

• Done (green)

Columns:

• TO DO

• IN PROGRESS

• IN REVIEW

• MERGED

• DONE

Statuses:

• TODO

• IN PROGRESS

• IN REVIEW

• MERGED

• DONE

• WON'T DO

You can access the following page from your Board configurations.