Beginner Jira question: Setting up a Kanban board or Scrum board

Question

I'm attempting to setup a new Scrum board or Kanban board (not sure which we want to use yet). When using post-it notes on the wall, we had setup the following columns, Ready, In progress, In validation, Ready for Production. We would create a post-it for each task and the story itself. Then, the story would follow the last task across the board. I can set up these columns in JIRA and configure the board to use Stories as swim lanes. However, the Story itself never exists in any column.  Currently the Story is displayed as a band that crosses all columns and doesn't exist in any one column. Is there a way to configure the JIRA boards so that the story flows across the board with the tasks?

Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Answer

The tasks remain grouped by stories.

However, my other standard advice about boards in JIRA Agile is roughly where you're headed already.  Have one scrum board for planning (if you are doing planning).  Then set up as many Kanban boards as you need, per team, project, purpose or even user, doesn't matter.  Make them the best you can for the target users.  Just educate them not to click "release" unless they understand the implications, and you can get as many different views as you want or need.

Craig Rowland · Answer

We're hoping to use JIRA to do something similar to this...http://www.agilemanic.com/kanban/kanban-scrum-tasks-board/

We think of Stories as MMFs. Tasks are the detailed work items that need to be completed to realize the Story. The issue that I think makes this difficult is that the Stories/MMFs have a different workflow from tasks. Tasks are Not Started/In Progress/Done. Stories are Ready/In Progress/Business Acceptance Testing/Ready for Deployment/Deployed. The pictures in the blog above show these sub-columns for tasks that make up a Story.

@Nic Brough, thanks for the suggestion. Unfortunately eliminating the swim lanes leaves you unable to see the progress of a particular Story because you cannot tell which Story any particular task belongs to. At least not by glancing at the board.

I think the best solution in JIRA is going to be to have two boards. A task tracking board will enable the delivery team to see the status of what they're working on, what's done, what's next, etc. A second board with Stories will allow all stakeholders to see the progress of our Stories/MMFs. External stakeholders don't really care about the task level detail anyway.

Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Answer

Nothing happens to the subtasks, they're on the board where they should be.  Nothing moves or changes, it just stops displaying the lanes by story.  Subtasks with their parents, and all on the board.