Is there a way for me to specify the PI we're in on a Kanban board?

Question

I suspect I know the answer... but is there a way for me to specify the current PI (Program Increment) my team is in and have that displayed on my Kanban board?  When we were practicing Scrum, my team was able to see the sprint number on the Scrum board... but now my team is sort of "driving blind", which really comes with Kanban.  However, despite operating as a Kanban team, we are still tightly coupled to our deployment cycle, which is our PI; even if it were a manual data field for me to enter so they could see the PI we're in, it would help them in choosing the correct Fix Versions, give us a way to correlate the work they're doing - either on our mainline train or on a hotfix train - to a given PI.

I've been looking, but I've come up empty.  I'm guessing there's no way for me to do this, but if I've overlooked anything, I'm all ears.  I know I can do this elsewhere - such as an a dashboard - but I'm looking for something on the Kanban board itself.  Thanks in advance...

Yuri Lapin _Release Management_ · Answer

Thanks @Bill Sheboy

I amended the wording to specify it's "our" App. My name also includes vendor name so I presume we are ok with guidance.

Cheers,

Yuri.

Bill Sheboy · Answer

Hi @Yuri Lapin _Release Management_  As a reminder...When recommending a marketplace vendor product, please ensure you disclose your affiliation to that vendor in your post wording. For more information about this, please see: Atlassian Community online guidelines for Marketplace and Solution Partners https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Marketplace-Apps-Integrations/Atlassian-Community-online-guidelines-for-Marketplace-and/ba-p/689723 Kind regards,Bill

Yuri Lapin _Release Management_ · Answer

Hi @Randy O'Neal

Trust you are well.

I think you need to figure out how you would like to define PIs in a first place. Couple of easy options could be:

* fixVersion standard field thus reusing Version/Release functionality of Jira. But bare in mind that it project specific and in case your Kanban board included multiple Jira projects that might not work.
* PI specific custom field (aka Single- or Multi- select). The downside here is adding new items if you release PIs frequently.
* Labels presuming you can keep some pattern/naming conventions and people will not mess with it.
* There are also 3rd party tools that allows you to manage PIs as designated entities with own workflow, properties, reporting, etc..

Once you define it I would add swimlanes for PIs on your Kanban board - current on top, 1-2 future below.

You might also want to check our Advanced Kanban Boards App where you can create  swimlanes automatically by any standard or custom Jira field. You can also do Swimlanes by custom JQL that will cover labels option if you want to go this way. You can also drag and drop issues between swimlanes to  either use it as planning mode for your PIs or drop issues to next PI as you go directly from the board.

Hope this helps.

Many thanks & Kind regards,

Yuri.