Yet Another Blank Backlog Question

[Ardis Ramey]

I've just created a new "team-managed" project and I cannot for the life of me get the backlog to work. I am by no means new to Jira, but this is my first time managing a new, unconfigured, project.

I know there are a million previous posts asking about this and I promise I've read them all. I've found plenty of people asking for what I'm asking for, but no direct explanations of how to achieve this outcome. Forgive me for being the million and first person to ask.

My team and I are working in a Kanban structure and intend for the backlog to hold all of our "future but not planned" work - as distinct from the tickets in To Do, In Progress, etc. I have seen everyone's recommendations that we create a Backlog column on our Kanban board and assign tickets there, but that is very explicitly NOT something we want. We very specifically want the columns To Do, In Progress, In Review, and Done to appear on our Kanban board, and for all work that is not ready for To Do yet (in essence, work we know will be done but isn't next in the queue) to be hidden from the Kanban board and to be in our Backlog where it belongs.

Please, how do I achieve this for my team?

Edited to add: I have enabled the Backlog in my project settings, and there is no "backlog" column automatically appearing under Project Settings > Columns and Statuses.

Our goal workflow is for any issue with the Open status to appear automatically in our Backlog, and to automatically transition from the Backlog to the Kanban Board when we change their status from Open to To Do, In Progress, etc.

[Mikael Sandberg]

Hi @Ardis Ramey,

Welcome to Atlassian Community!

When you enable the backlog it will not show up as a column in TMP, instead it will show up on the left hand side as it's own menu. It is only in a company-managed project that you would see the backlog as a column when configuring the board.

You should see something like this in your project if the backlog is enabled:

And if I go to the Board you will see that only one if the tasks are visible since that one was added to the board.

  

[Ardis Ramey]

Thank you, Mikael, for your considerate answer. I do understand the distinction you're drawing. I apologize if I did not clarify that in my original question.

I have a backlog enabled, and as you can see in this screenshot it's empty. I have close to 30 issues created and other than the 8 that are in To Do, In Progress, and In Review, all the other issues should appear in the Backlog.

My question is how do I configure my Project(s) so that all Open issues are shown here, in my project's Backlog?

I mentioned the Kanban board columns because many of the previous questions on this topic were answered with the "workaround" that you add a Backlog column to your Kanban board. That is, again, explicitly what my team does not need. Since I didn't want anyone to waste their time detailing that workaround, I mentioned it.

[Mikael Sandberg]

Is the resolution field set on the missing issues by any chance? Or do you have any unassigned statuses? For the resolution, just go to Issues and check the Resolution column, if it says Unresolved they should show up on the board.

[Ardis Ramey]

All issues are Unresolved, but you've hit on the heart of the matter with your question about unassigned statuses. See, that's the "workaround" I was talking about.

We currently have the Open status unassigned to any columns in the Kanban Board. I understand that "unassigned" means that they will be hidden from the Backlog. However, that's the specific thing we're trying to solve. We want tickets with an Open status to automatically show up in our Backlog - but we do not want them to appear on our Kanban Board in any column.

My question is how do we achieve this?

[Mikael Sandberg]

You can't. In order for them to show up in the backlog the status has to be assigned to a column. But they will not automatically show up on the board just because the status is mapped. Once you map the status, the issues will show up in the backlog and only issues that have been added to the board will show up as you can see from my first reply.

[Ardis Ramey]

Thank you, Mikael. Again, I really appreciate your considerate replies. I don't believe that I'm understanding you, though.

When I add a column so that I can assign these "backlog" items to it, that column is appearing in the Kanban Board and I do not see any option to hide it. Is that where the disconnect is - that I'm overlooking the option to hide that column from my Kanban Board?

I'm sure that this is very obvious to you, and I sincerely appreciate your patience as it is completely unclear to me at this point. I look forward to having a deeper understanding of these configurations one day.

[Mikael Sandberg]

The mapping of the statuses to the columns is what controls what you see both in the backlog and on the board. You can map multiple statuses to a single column like this:

See the mapping as a way of filtering your issues, unassigned statuses are invisible to the backlog/board.

Yes, when you change the workflow and add a new status that will also add a new column to your board, but you can always map the status to a different column and then delete the column that was created.

Only issues that have been moved from the backlog to the board  in the backlog view are visible on the board in the respective columns. All the other issues stays in the backlog no matter what status they are in. The only exception is issues that considered done based on the column furtherest to the right on the board.

[Trudy Claspill]

I'm going to jump in to see if a different voice can shed some light.

If you are familiar with a Company Managed project Kanban board, you may be familiar with the concept of mapping statuses to the Kanban Backlog.

When you map a status to that area, that enables the Backlog screen for that kanban board. The issues that are in the statuses mapped to the "Kanban backlog" column will display only on the Backlog screen.

To move an issue to the Board view you change the Status of the issue to one that is mapped to one of the other columns (a status that is not in the "Kanban backlog" area).

Team Managed project Kanban boards do not work the same way.

In a Team Managed project Kanban board the issue Status is not used to determine if the issue displays in the Backlog screen or in the Board view. An issue can be in any of the valid statuses and appear in either the Backlog list on the Backlog screen or Board list of the Backlog screen and in the columns on the board view.

Notice below in the Backlog screen for my TM Kanban board there are issues in the "To Do" status in both the Backlog section and the Board section.

With these projects you move an issue from the "backlog" to the board not by changing its status, but by literally dragging it from the Backlog list in the Backlog screen to the Board list in the Backlog screen.

The items in the Board list on the Backlog screen will display in the Board/column-ized view. The items in the Backlog list on the Backlog screen will not display in the Board view.

Status is not used to separate issues between the Backlog and the Board. The separation is based entirely on the position of the issue in one or the other of the two lists shown above on the Backlog screen.