Backlog view (Kanban) of In Progress issues (multiple statuses)

[Andrew Ball]

This question may upset the Kanban purists, as our approach is a little unconventional but please bear with...

I have a JIRA project that uses multiple statuses for In Progress (this is representative of our workflow). Mapping each status to a column on a Kanban works really well for us. The problem is that when I switch to Backlog view, the In Progress row at the top only shows the first mapped In Progress status column and not the rest. Whichever In Progress column I put farthest left on the board is the only one it picks up.

I could live with it only showing just one if I could toggle between them in Backlog view, but sadly that's not an option either. I suspect this is an example of me pushing JIRA beyond its feature set for a use case it was never intended to address, but God loves an optimist so I live in hope that there might be a solution to this.

Appreciate any input or assistance

Andy

[Sramanth Pandeti]

Hi @Andrew Ball I think your workflow is configured in such a way that there is only a transition from the status in the backlog to the "In progress" status. Can you modify your workflow to have a transition from 1) backlog status -> Selected for development and 2) Backlog status -> requires clarification. This should help you choose the status when you drag and drop to the "In progress" column (top swimlane).

Let me know if this helps.

[Andrew Ball]

Hi Sramanth, all my IN PROGRESS statuses can transition to BACKLOG (transitions are set to ALL) so I don't think this is the issue - I don't want to over-complicate the workflow any more than it already is by adding specific transitions to each workflow unless there is significant value in doing so but appreciate the response thanks.

[Joshua Sneed Contegix]

Hi Andrew,

The status that shows at the top of the kanban backlog is intended for statuses where the issues are ready to be worked, but work has not started. Check out Atlassian's Using your Kanban backlog page and it's related content links. Cheers!

[Andrew Ball]

Thanks for that Joshua - so take the 'Selected For Development' status in the example you have linked to. Now imagine I have three columns called 'Selected for Development', 'In Development' and 'Requires Clarification'. All of these map to the IN PROGRESS status in the workflow. My Backlog view only shows the 'In Development' issues in the top swim lane and the BACKLOG issues in the bottom swim lane where as I want it show the other two statuses in the top swim lane as well. That's the problem in a nutshell - is there a fix?

[Joshua Sneed Contegix]

Hi Andrew,

No, that is not how Jira Software is programmed. It may be possible to put in a suggestion with Atlassian though. You may want to stop using the Kanban backlog and map all statuses to columns if you would like to see all issues in one place. Cheers!

[Andrew Ball]

Thanks Joshua, your suggestion to map statuses to columns is exactly what I have done in the Kanban view - which works really well for our use case (I accept it's a bit non-standard) so we can work around not seeing the full set of In Progress tickets in backlog view. Thanks for taking the time out to respond.