Deleting a Sprint moves any closed issues on it to the top non-active Sprint on the board

Issue Summary

When deleting a Sprint, all issues on it are moved to another Sprint instead of the backlog.

That will include any Done issues that belonged to the Sprint as well.

• The "target sprint" is always the uppermost sprint in the backlog that is not active.
• If there are no Future Sprints in the board, the issues will properly have the Sprint value removed.

I also noticed that you will see the behavior described on (JSWSERVER-16207) Issue history has no original value for Sprint when a Sprint is deleted as well since the issue will have the Sprint value removed followed by the move to another sprint.

This is reproducible on Data Center: yes

Steps to Reproduce

1. Create Sprint A
2. Create Sprint B
3. Create Issue-1 on Sprint A
4. Create Issue-2 on Sprint B
5. Close Issue-2 so Sprint B shows empty (note that issue Issue-2 will still have sprint="Sprint B")
6. Delete Sprint B

Expected Results

Done issues have their Sprint value removed once the Sprint they belonged to got deleted.

Actual Results

Issue-2 is moved to Sprint A.

• If you start Sprint A, it starts with Issue-2 and Issue-1 with Issue-2 being already closed.

Workaround

If you must delete a sprint, you may prevent this behavior by manually removing any closed issues from the Sprint before deleting it.

You can use this article to find the Sprint ID:

• Jira Software: How to identify the ID of a sprint

Then you can use a JQL search to find the issues you want to remove the Sprint value before deleting the Sprint:

sprint = <SPRINTID> and statusCategory = done