Run Sprints with Kanban Board?

[Cyril James]

Hi Team, I manage a product team at our company. I have a Jira Kanban board.  I have 15 people on my team. The vast majority of our work fits a Kanban board perfectly.

Five people on my team want to start timeboxing work and want to run Sprints. 

We won't be switching to a Scrum Board.

Are there any work arounds or alternate solutions to support the part of my team what wants to run Sprints.  

We have company managed projects that are pretty locked down.  

Thank you

[Bill Sheboy]

Hi @Cyril James 

I recommend starting with a conversation with the entire team, including the people who "want to start timeboxing work and want to run Sprints":

• What problem are they trying to solve?  That is, why do that?
• What do they believe would be different, and why do they believe that?
• What ideas-to-try does the entire team have about the concerns?

This conversation may indicate some process changes for the entire team, or a missing work item type (i.e., the Kanban term not the Jira one) which has a different class of service requiring timeboxing.

With those in hand, the team could look at existing, Kanban cadenced and timeboxed practices to see how they might help, such as:

• during work intake and queue replenishment, confirm the type for things with timeboxes
• during the daily huddle / standup, after walking the board from right-to-left, examine items with timeboxes to watch for challenges, and manage them
• for any review and retrospective conversations, perhaps use a Jira Dashboard to raise visibility by work item type (again, the Kanban meaning) including the progress of timeboxed ones using JQL filters

Kind regards,
Bill

[Cyril James]

Thank you Bill for the thoughtful response.  I've had conversations.  I need to know a work around in Jira to support what they want to do.  Could we add a custom field or label and use for Sprint 1, 2. etc.  What other tool work arounds can I use to support what they want to do.

[Bill Sheboy]

Although you could add a custom field (or label value) to indicate "Sprint 1", etc. that may not be enough information.  In Jira, a Sprint has a defined timeframe and scope,  distinctive reporting, and each work item could carryover to multiple sprints.  Those things are not easily possible with just a single custom field or use of labels.

The only workaround I was suggesting was to use a time-based JQL filter on a dashboard gadget to see what was in a specific "sprint", although that could also check the custom field / label value.

When the team truly wants to use the Scrum practices supported by Jira, you may want to talk to your Jira admins about adding an additional board to the project specifically for that.  (The items could also still display on the Kanban board, if that is needed.)  This is easily possible for a company-managed project.