Display blocked issue in backlog

Question

Dear,

I got a request this morning to know if it's possible to add a "Blocked" line above the "In progress" one on the Backlog view:

Actually we have something like this:

And the user wishes something like this:

I tried multiple different ways but nothing seems to works. Is it even possible?

Thank you.

Mark Segall · Answer

Hi @mathias.osterhagen

If the team is set up for a scrum board, but they're not a development team, you may want to explore migrating them to a Work Management board.  The effort to migrate them to the new project may be outweighed by the suffering you'll go through trying to shoehorn them into a solution intended for developers.  As an added bonus, you'd have financial justification as you'd be able to free up some Jira Software licensing in the process.

mathias.osterhagen · Answer

Hello @Mark Segall  !
Thank you some much for your welcoming!

I don't know what my previous colleague did but here is what I know: 
This project is not used by developers but by another team to manage their tasks and they do not use sprint (I mean in a conventional way like developers).

Then if I understand well, there is no way to add a "Blocked" above the "In progress" in the default project backlog dashboard?

Then I need to create a new scrum dashboard, create 2 sprints with infinite duration and use the Jira automation to move them (automatically) in one or another when they set them in "blocked" or "in progress"?

I will try that now and let you know. Thank you !

Mark Segall · Answer

Hi @mathias.osterhagen and welcome to the community!

First and foremost, you need to think about whether these blocked items are in an active sprint or not.

Active Sprint

Configure your board SWIMLANE settings so that blocked issues always appear on top

Backlog

There are a couple options that I've employed over the years to varying degrees of success. Nowadays, I convince my teams/clients to use a filter or dashboard if they wish to see things a specific way. Anyway, here are some options

* Dedicated "Blockers Sprint" that is never started - You can move these items into a dedicated sprint and with Jira automation, you could even have this done automatically when the issue is flagged/unflagged.
* Create a dummy issue with an eye-catching summary (e.g. emojis or "-------blockers above this line --------") and move all flagged items above that line