Status shared between Kanban Boards

[Matthew Risch]

I have a Team doing Technical work, and a separate Team doing Testing.  I have put a workflow together where the last column of the Technical Kanban share the status with the first column on the Testing Board.  Simple example below:

Technical Kanban   ----------------------------->   Testing Kanban

To Do > In Progress > Test Ready   |  Test Ready > Testing > Done

When the Technical Team moves the Task to Test Ready, the Testing Team will see it on their Board. When they are Ready to work the Task, they move it to a Testing Status.

This approach works very well from a flow perspective for these two Teams. 

However, the configuration does seem to have it's challenges when trying to run a Control Chart or Cumulative Flow report from the Technical Board.

I've look at a few options and gadgets, but nothing is jumping out at me as a clear solution, hence this post.

Thoughts?

[Fabian Lim]

Hi @Matthew Risch

I agree with Bill's response, but if you want to keep your process, I have worked on similar requests in our organization and the way we solved it was with eazybi reporting. 

In eazybi you can specify what the closed status is and have separate accounts for each team and build control charts and cumulative flow reports.

I suggest you sign up for a free trial and contact them via email or their community blog with a visual of the reports you want to see.

Cheers.

[Matthew Risch]

Thank you all - I appreciate all the responses!

@Bill - The Jira categories in this case have no impact. It's all about what the first and last status is in the column, but I like the way you were thinking about this :)

I do believe I figured it out, and it was so simple it's a bit frustrating lol.... I was switching between Board Reports from the Reports view, and could not get the data.  However, when I exit Reports, look at the Board, and go back into Reports the data is there. It's almost like Jira was getting mixed up and needed me to exit Reports, load the Board I wanted, then reenter. 

Again, really appreciate all the inputs.  And @Fabian - I have used eazybi and it works well. Just dont have access to it for this current client. 

[Bill Sheboy]

Yup, that makes sense: the board filter drives the reporting and so Jira needs clarity on the current board to decide the reports.  This is very obvious when using both Scrum and Kanban boards for a project...the report sets are different.

I am glad to learn you figured it out!

[Bill Sheboy]

Hi @Matthew Risch 

If you actually have two different boards, as you show, are you re-opening done work when it moves to "Test Ready" or cloning it?

If you instead used one board, and added some quick filters, I would expect that:

• Your entire workflow would be visible on one board;
• You could selectively use quick filters/options if you wanted to see specific things on the board, Control Chart, or the CFD; and
• Your teams would be better able to accurately measure the effort to complete work, beginning to end.

Best regards,
Bill

[Matthew Risch]

The general rule is One Team, One Board.  In this instance, I have Two Teams, a Technical Team and a completely separate Testing Team, and therefore, they have their own Boards.  

 Too many variables to discuss, but for the sake of solutioning lets land on the fact that One Board will not work in this situation.

There is no re-opening of work or cloning needed. Jira issueTypes do not belong to specific Boards. The Boards are like Windows into a house (a house being the project) and based on how we query the Board and map the status's will determine what we see. 

When a Task enters the status of Test Ready, it will appear on any Board that has that status mapped and where the query allows it.  This means, as the Technical Team moves work through and hits their last column mapped to Test Ready, meaning their part of the work is done, that same Task also appears on the Testing Board where Test Ready is mapped to the first column. 

This allows for a continuous flow of work to the Testing Team. Bottle necks on the Testing side will be immediately apparent as their backlog (first column of their Testing Board) begins to fill up.  The Technical Team will see this as well as Task are not being cleared from the last column of their Technical Board.  

This is the overall workflow: To Do > In Progress > Test Ready > Testing > Done

Test Ready is mapped twice, once to the Technical Board and once to the Testing Board. 

The challenge is the control chart report isnt picking up what it would if a status wasnt shared. 

For example: To Do > In Progress > Test Ready  > |  >Test Backlog > Testing > Done

This solves the report problem, but requires an additional status, and for the Technical Team to bulk transition items they want to share with the Testing Team manually.

This would be a significant slow down in our throughput, so not an option.

The question comes down to Lead/Cycle time (Control Chart or other)...    possible solution approaches to mitigate this issue. 

It may be beneficial if anyone has a test area to recreate this. 2 Kanban Boards with the workflow I laid out above.  If you've never used this approach, you may be intrigued. And it may help in figuring out how to pull the metrics I'm looking for from this configurations.

Side Note: I use similar functionality for Scrum Teams.

When an Active Sprint Board and a Kanban Board share the same status, this JQL snipit must be added to the Kanban boards filter: sprint in closedSprints()

What will this do? This will prevent Stories that are in the last column of the Active Sprint Board from appearing on the Kanban Board until the Sprint is closed.

Why does this matter?  Because for Jira to capture the Story Points completed, it looks at the last column of the Active Sprint when the Sprint is Completed. All completed work must remain there unto this happens.

Since there is no End to a Kanban Boards flow, there is no such query to hold Task until metrics are captured.  And in this situation, I would not want that.  I want the flow to continue, I just would like to report on it.

[Bill Sheboy]

Thanks for your explanation, @Matthew Risch 

I understand the concept of flow.  And indeed in Jira, a board is a filtered view of issues in one (or more) projects.  There is an issue when using Jira with your use case: One status value has one status category: to do, in progress, or done.

When you created your Test Ready status, you selected one status category value.  Looking at your two board model, you are asking Jira to have two values for the same status of Test Ready:

• "Done" for your Technical Kanban, and
• "To Do" for your Testing Kanban

This is why I asked how you transitioned items between boards: some teams clone the issue, preserving history, and creating independent team/board reporting using a new status (e.g. your Test Backlog status); while others re-open the issue for the new board, adding to measurement.

How your teams choose to solve this will depend upon how they want to work and what they want to measure.

Best regards,
Bill

[Trudy Claspill]

Can you elaborate on the challenges you are facing and the problem you are trying to solve?