Long term backlog?

Question

Is there any way to create a longterm backlog for issues you won't be able to get to for maybe a year? I can see our backlog getting clogged up but there may be some issues we want to review quarterly or annually.

Any suggestion on how to best handle this?

Wade Tracy _Boise_ ID_ · Answer

@Jack Brickey - Nice! I don't know why I didn't think of the option of using multiple boards also.

Jack Brickey · Answer

you can consider creating two boards...and borrowing terms from Wade...

Board 1: 'What we are working on now'

Board 2: 'Deep Freeze'

For this I would use Labels and apply the labels according to the boards, e.g. Board 1 "...labels != DeepFreeze" and Board2 "...labels = DeepFreeze"

Wade Tracy _Boise_ ID_ · Answer

Although I don't exactly like what I'm going to recommend, it's what we do and it works pretty well.  The only reason I don't like it is that I hate seeing issues hang around long-term and most of them never actually see the light of day, but that's for another post =)

What you are describing is oftentimes called the Fridge or Freezer.  How you implement it is up to you.  You can have a component or label that you use to tag issues, or go the route my company did and have actual statuses.  I'm not too thrilled about the status approach because the issue should still be in the 'Triage' status (or whatever status you use for backlog) even if we aren't going to look at it for a while--having additional statuses just muddies the workflows.

Ok, where was I, ah yes, so you come up with a way to tag these issues and then you use quick filters to make them disappear from your backlog when you want.  That way you can easily see them when you need, but a simple click makes them disappear.

Info on creating quick filters: https://confluence.atlassian.com/jirasoftwarecloud/configuring-quick-filters-764478015.html

If you want to get real tricky, you could then create a filter to see issues that have been in the 'fridge' for over a year (or some time) and create a subscription to the filter so that you get an email notification reminding you to review those issues (https://confluence.atlassian.com/jiracorecloud/working-with-search-results-765593781.html).  But I'm going to bet that will eventually get old and you will realize, as I have, that once an issue goes into the 'fridge' it never comes out again.