Hello Atlassian Community In the book "Agile Project Management with Kanban", Eric Brechner recommends to create pairwise columns, with intermediate "Done" columns where team members can pull tasks from. The idea is to have an overall WIP limit for each "Doing" and "Done" column pair. (A practical example is also given in the following talk: https://youtu.be/CD0y-aU1sXo) Our current Jira board columns look similar to this: * To Do (min. 3 / max. 10) * In Development (max. 3) * Done with Development / Ready for Review (max. 3) * In Review (max. 3) * Done with Review / Ready for Test (max. 3) * In Test (max. 3) * Done (no limit) How we would like to configure the limits: * To Do (min. 3 / max. 10 -- as before) * In Development + Done with Development (max. 6) * In Review + Done with Review (max. 6) * In Test (max. 3 -- as before) * Done (no limit -- as before) To clarify: The highlighted columns should still be separate, but the number of tickets in both columns should count towards the same limit. The rationale behind this is that it makes no sense to pull more tickets into "In Development" when "Done with Development" is already near its WIP limit, because finished tickets will inevitably get moved to "Done with Development" and break that limit. Is there any way to configure such WIP limits that apply to multiple columns in Jira? In case this feature is not (yet) available -- is there a way to emulate this "pairwise column workflow" using existing Jira features? Best, Thomas

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How to configure overall WIP limits (including each "Done" column)?

thomas.heller

Hello Atlassian Community

In the book "Agile Project Management with Kanban", Eric Brechner recommends to create pairwise columns, with intermediate "Done" columns where team members can pull tasks from.

The idea is to have an overall WIP limit for each "Doing" and "Done" column pair.

(A practical example is also given in the following talk: https://youtu.be/CD0y-aU1sXo)

Our current Jira board columns look similar to this:

To Do (min. 3 / max. 10)
In Development (max. 3)
Done with Development / Ready for Review (max. 3)
In Review (max. 3)
Done with Review / Ready for Test (max. 3)
In Test (max. 3)
Done (no limit)

How we would like to configure the limits:

To Do (min. 3 / max. 10 -- as before)
In Development + Done with Development (max. 6)
In Review + Done with Review (max. 6)
In Test (max. 3 -- as before)
Done (no limit -- as before)

To clarify: The highlighted columns should still be separate, but the number of tickets in both columns should count towards the same limit.

The rationale behind this is that it makes no sense to pull more tickets into "In Development" when "Done with Development" is already near its WIP limit, because finished tickets will inevitably get moved to "Done with Development" and break that limit.

Is there any way to configure such WIP limits that apply to multiple columns in Jira?

In case this feature is not (yet) available -- is there a way to emulate this "pairwise column workflow" using existing Jira features?

Best,
Thomas

Accepted answers

All comments

Tessa Tuteleers

Hi @thomas.heller ,

Welcome to the community!

Sadly, having 1 WIP limit spanning multiple columns is not possible right now.
I do know of an open suggestion for server here, you can vote for it and request a duplicate request for cloud.

I'm not sure how you could emulate this with other features, but you might think about a dashboard with filters (combining the statuses), then you get total counts you can follow up more easily, but ofcourse no indications on the board by doing this.

Sorry to not be of more help.

- Tessa

Aron Gombas _Midori_

It's not possible with built-in features, unfortunately.

A workaround that comes to my mind, is that you could build automation rules that could check it (not apriori, but at least tell you if the limits were hit). Basically these could run JQL queries in every 5 minutes that collect the issues in a pair and check if the resulted list exceeds the limit. If it does, then send an email or Slack message or other type of notification.

thomas.heller

Hi @Piet Pieters

Thanks for referencing the existing suggestion; I opened a corresponding ticket for Jira Cloud here: JRACLOUD-77822

thomas.heller

According to the comments in JSWSERVER-2521 there seem to be two possible workarounds at the moment:

Use labels for intermediate Done statuses (according to this and that comment)
Install "Kanban Combined WIP" from Marketplace (extra cost)

Bill Sheboy

Hi @thomas.heller

And here is the suggestion I added for that earlier this year:

https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JSWCLOUD-21297

Kind regards,
Bill

thomas.heller

Hi @Bill Sheboy

Sorry, I didn't realize you already created a ticket, since I only checked the "Jira Cloud" project for existing suggestions.

As a matter of fact, I wasn't even aware that there is a separate "Jira Software Cloud" project.

What is the difference between the "Jira Cloud" and the "Jira Software Cloud" project?

Yuri Lapin _Release Management_

Hi Atlassian Community.

I hope this message finds you.

Together with a team we looked at the above question from @thomas.heller and this is an exact match to some of our clients’ requests. So, we decided it’s about time to implement it in our App.

At our Kanban boards you can create a Group of Columns (Statuses) and assign a Combined WIP. This goes in addition to individual column WIPs, swimlane WIPs and their intersection WIPs.

Try it out!

Cheers,

Yuri.

William_esacqq

Hi Yuri,

This looks really interesting. Is this available somewhere?

Best,

William

Yuri Lapin _Release Management_

Hi @William

Thanks for reaching out. Fixed the link in my original answer. I will put it here as well

https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/1223877/advanced-agile-boards?hosting=cloud&tab=overview

Cheers,

Yuri.

Brandon Barski

I'm in the process of setting up a new instance, and the way we're trying to solve this is to place two statuses within a single column. For instance, in a development column we have the statuses "Development - Doing" and "Development - Done". We then apply the group WIP limit to the column and it should cover both statuses (at least that's the theory). We've also set a card color condition that puts a green stripe on any cards that are in a "done" column status. This allows the board to signal that a card is ready to be pulled to the next status. This is the best workaround we could find without having to buy a plugin.

Bill Sheboy

Hi @Brandon Barski -- Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

That is a good work-around.

Another we have used is to unassign an issue when it is ready to be pulled to the next step. Then people can filter on unassigned issues (or glance at the board) to see what to pull next.

Kind regards,
Bill

Chris Morgan_pb5u4f

As others have noted, it isn't implemented, but there are a couple ways to hack it up.

This and several other great tips are listed in this article:
https://evogility.com.au/jira-kanban-board-hacks/

I definitely recommend reading this if you're going to be working with kanban boards in Jira in any depth

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