How can I update a Backlog board to be Kanban?

[Cindy Hyde]

I have two Kanban boards with the cards. The other one shows Backlog with the items as a list. How can I make the Backlog a Kanban also?

[John Funk]

Hi Cindy - Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

For a Kanban board, if you want Backlog functionality, you need to go the Board Settings and place a status in the Backlog section under Columns menu option of the Layout. 

[Trudy Claspill]

Hello @Cindy Hyde 

Welcome to the Atlassian community.

I am not clear on what you are asking. Can you provide more information? And can you provide screen images to help illustrate your current state and what you want your future state to be?

Also what types of Spaces does this concern? You can find the Space Type by click the ellipses next to the Space name in the panel on the left, then reviewing the last two lines in the pop-up that displays.

Note that there are two aspects to a Space Type:

- is it Business, Software, or Service

- is it Team-managed or Company-managed

With a Kanban board for a Software type of Space you can have a view that has all items on the board, or you can split the view to have some items in the Backlog and others displayed in the Board.

If you no longer want to have some items displayed separately in the Backlog you can switch to using only the board view. The exact manner for doing that depends on whether your Space is Team-managed or Company-managed.

[Trudy Claspill]

Thank you all for the responses.  I need to spend time reading all the info but it seems I may have to delete and start over if i want my Backlog board to be a Kanban board. 

Hello @Cindy Hyde 

Before you delete anything it would be helpful if you can provide a screen image of what you have. There may be a way to save what you have.

There is no such thing as a "Backlog" board. Having an image of what you are referring to would be very helpful to us. It would also be helpful to know what type of Space you are using.

If you have a tab labeled "Backlog" in your display Space display then chances are good that it is already possible to have a Kanban board without having to start over.

[Cindy Hyde]

Thank you all for the responses.  I need to spend time reading all the info but it seems I may have to delete and start over if i want my Backlog board to be a Kanban board. 

[Brant Schroeder]

@Cindy Hyde welcome to the Atlassian community

Here are some instructions on how to setup your Kanban backlog - https://support.atlassian.com/jira-software-cloud/docs/use-your-kanban-backlog/ 

The main issue with a backlog not showing up is usually because of status mapping.  From the documentation: "If you map all the statuses to the first column (Selected for Development), you won't see any work items in the Backlog section of the kanban backlog. You will only see work items in the Selected for Development section."