How can I have my filtered Kanban board show the same ordering as on the Backlog?

Question

Our team has a company-managed project. The main board is a Scrum board, complete with a backlog and all that jazz.

We have two extra kanban boards:

* "Kaizen" Kanban board - showing only issue type 'kaizen task' from the aforementioned backlog.
* "Refinement" Kanban board - showing only issues with status 'refinable' from the aforementioned backlog.

Issues shown on the Kaizen board are ordered as they are on the backlog.

Issues shown on the Refinement board are not ordered as they are on the backlog. There is also no discernable ordering being applied. The board settings show that they all get the same project key, and sorting by rank ASC.

Can anyone tell me why one Kanban board is showing the correct order, and the other is not?

Bill Sheboy · Answer

For both boards, would you please post images of:

* image of the board settings with the filter
* image of the board column mapping for status values
* image of the backlog, showing any defined sprints for the scrum board

That may provide more context, and so ideas to try.  Thanks!

Sean de Leeuw_wgo76c · Answer

Hi Bill,

I was just checking the tickets, when I found out what exactly the 'random ordering' is.

Our PO likes to prepare things in sprints ahead of time. Now there are sprints filled with things that have the status 'refinable', but they are being placed 'under' the tickets that are on the regular backlog.

To make this more visual, what happens is this:

Backlog:

Sprint X:
TEST-001
TEST-002
TEST-003

Actual Backlog:
TEST-004
TEST-005
TEST-006

Refinement board:

TEST-004
TEST-005
TEST-006
TEST-001
TEST-002
TEST-003

I still have no idea why this is happening, and how to make the ordering as it is the PO intends it (importance from top to bottom, not backlog first and upcoming sprints second).

Any thoughts?

Bill Sheboy · Answer

Hi @Sean de Leeuw -- Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

For 2 (or more) issues in the same column of your Refinement board, have you visually confirmed their order is different than if you ran the same filter JQL as a stand-alone query?

For company-managed projects, a board is a view of the project issues based on the filter (and sprint and mapped status values).  If the filter has an ORDER BY clause the issues display in that order on the backlog and board.  Without an ORDER BY clause, I would guess the behavior is undefined...and subject to how the database returns them.

And also...boards have columns with mapped status values.

So for a simple example of all the issues on the board showing in one column, they will match the filter order.

Kind regards,
Bill