Best practice for Epic/Stories tracking in a Kanban board

[Allende Hernández Llácer]

Hello folks,

I am new to Jira and coming from TFS, so I'm still framing my mind to understand the Jira flow.

I am struggling with something probably very obvious. I have a Kanban board where my highest level of organization is Epic (my company decided to make my department a "Project" so I lost that level for my use). I am using Epic to track "projects" so I am only interested as of now in Epics and Stories.

My setup: 

• Kanban board with three columns (To do. In Progress, Done)
• The "In Progress' column has several "Status" (In Dev, In QA, Passed QA....etc)

My problem comes when I have Stories under an Epic that are "In Progress" and some still in "To Do". I'm not sure what to do with mt Epic. If I put it under To Do, it doesn't seem right, as I leave behind Stories in "To Do". Same happen to the opposite, if I leave the Epic in "To Do" It does not seem right either, as in fact..it is in progress. I've attached a picture for reference.

What is the best practice here ?  or is there anything in the setup Im missing that would help me track work in a better way?

[Ste Wright · Accepted solution]

Hi @Allende Hernández Llácer 

When it comes to Epic vs Story status, I actually think it can be down to personal preference.

It depends on your definition of "Doing" - for me, I move an Epic to "In Progress" as soon as one story moves to an equivalent progress status. This is because an Epic is made up of all the stories below it - so if one commences, then the Epic itself has also commenced.

Likewise, I move an Epic to "Done" when the last story does. This is because if any one story remains open, the Epic cannot be completed.

This helps me track the overall cycle time of the Epic.

Ste

[Allende Hernández Llácer]

Thank you very much Stephen. That was my first though, but then I looked at my board and looked awkward to me as there were children Stories orphan in the To Do list as their Epic was moved from their top. 

The pic I attached is precisely that scenario you described.  

[Ste Wright]

Hi @Allende Hernández Llácer 

I would consider whether to have Epics and Stories on the same board - from a Kanban perspective, it's the story which is the actual "doing" of the work, the Epic is more of a container for the work in most cases.

You could filter the Epics out - or, consider adding the Backlog to the Kanban Board? On the Backlog you can show issues in the first column as a backlog list - and have the Epics in a panel on the left-hand side, like in a Scrum board.

To activate the Kanban Backlog and test what this looks like, you'll need to be a Board Admin and then:

1. Go to Board > Configure
2. Select Columns from the left-hand menu
3. Drag a status (ideally the first one in your workflow) into the blue-shaded area on the left-hand side which is listed as the Backlog
4. Once the backlog is activated, an option to toggle the "Epics Panel" should also be on this screen - toggle it to on
5. Go back to your board to view the results

^ As part of this, I'd also consider splitting out the "In Progress" column into more columns, to get a clearer view of progress through development and testing. Adding and rearranging columns can be done from the same location.

Ste

[Allende Hernández Llácer]

Thank you again. I implemented some of your suggestions and its looking a lot closer to what my brain needs.