Can I create new "categories" in the Kanban Backlog other than Backlog and Selected for Development?

Question

We have a process that we go through on our team of identifying ACs of features to breakdown into stories that are then refined.  In order to capture where the stories are in this process (before they can be "selected for development" I was wanting to keep them in the Backlog, but with additional categories to indicate what status they are in.  Can I create new categories in the Kanban backlog to help with this?

John Rotondo · Answer

Are there any 3rd party solutions for this? Jira plug-ins perhaps? I have no faith in Atlassian getting around to building this in as a feature.

Petter Gonçalves · Answer

Hello Carrie,

Welcome to Atlassian Community!

Per your description, I understand that you would like to split your backlog section in multiple swimlanes, each one displaying issues from a specific Status. Is that correct?

Unfortunately, it is not possible to be accomplished in Jira, however, we have a feature request created to get this functionality implemented:

- Split Backlog Into User-defined Sections

Feel free to vote and watch the suggestion to increase its priority and also receive notifications about any updates.

That being said, there are some options you can use to achieve a similar scenario. Here are some of them:

1 - You can create quick filters in your board to display only issues from a specific status. Every time you click in the Quick filter, the backlog section will display issues only from a specific status

2 - You can navigate to your board > Board settings > Card Colors > Add some queries specifying the status you want it to split, so you can configure your backlog issues to be with a specific color based in their statuses.

Let me know if you have any questions.