Cloud, Company-managed project can't disable sprints to use a Kanban backlog/board

[Eric Hoppe]

I've seen a couple of questions about converting an existing scrum project / board to Kanban.  One answer says that sprints can be disabled at the project-level.  Another answer says that all I need to do is create a new, kanban board. 

By project, I've swapped out the Scrum Workflow scheme for a new Kanban scheme and created a new Kanban board for the new workflows and scheme.  However, the kanban backlog remains separate from the pre-existing scrum backlog.  Issues will not show up in the Kanban backlog / board.

I see no mention of Sprints in Project Settings | Features.  I think because this is a Company-managed project?

I can see find no way to remove the sprint oriented backlog or alter the projects that I want to use the Kanban backlog and board.  

How do I drop the scrum/sprints from a project to make it Kanban?  This is Jira Cloud and company-managed projects.

[Trudy Claspill · Accepted solution]

Hello @Eric Hoppe 

You are correct that there is no Project Setting in Company Managed projects for disabling sprints. Company Managed projects are not specifically designated as either Scrum or Kanban. When the project is initially created the creator can specify that they want to use Scrum or Kanban, and the creation process will create a default board according to their choice. But that doesn't lock the project to only that type of board.

Also note that Sprints are not limited to the issues of specified projects. Jira allows issues from any project to be added to any sprint, if you have enough permissions.

If you want to eliminate the use of sprints you just need to delete the Scrum boards. Note that will also delete all the historic sprint and velocity reports.

However you don't have to delete the Scrum boards in order to use Kanban. You can have both Scrum and Kanban boards that show the same issues.

Whether or not an issue displays in a board is based on the boards filter. If issues are not displaying in your Kanban board that has to do with the filter for the board and the data in the issues, not necessarily because they also appear in a Scrum board.

So, to diagnose the problem of issues not appearing in a Kanban board we need to know how the board is configured and some details about issues you think should display but that are not displaying.

What is the filter you are using for your Kanban board?

Do you have the sub-filter specified?

Do you have the Hide Completed option set?

Example:

Do the missing issues meet the criteria of your filter, and not have a Released Version specified in the Fix Version/s field, and are not in a status mapped to the right-most column and having been there for a time longer than that specified in the Hide Completed option?

Can you share with us the mapping of Statuses to Columns for your board?

Do you have any statuses in the Unmapped statuses area of the Columns configuration? Any issue in a status that is in the Unmapped Statuses area will not display in your Board view nor in the Backlog view (if you have the Backlog view enabled).