How to change "active sprints" board to regular board in a Scrum project

Question

Project template - Scrum
Type - Company managed

So with this variation, in a new created project i have separate backlog board and also a board called "active sprints". 
Is there a way to have a regular board, not for sprint related tasks only, but a regular board where i can move any issue from backlog?
Problem that i want to solve:
During every sprint we are having also separate from sprint tasks which i want to be visible on the board. But, as the board is only for active sprint, i can see only issues which are moved to current sprint section in the backlog. What i want to do is to have board which is not for the current sprint only, move all issues i want from backlog, and then i will separate sprint issues from non sprint issues by a filter (for example, "current release" filter will show only sprint related issues, and disabling the filter will show all issues on the board)
 the backlog side i want to have a sort of functionality, to move any issue to the board by changing the status(for example: new created issue status is "backlog", when i change the status to "To Do" it should be visible on kanban board)
I couldn't find any setting to change the format of the "current sprints" board into a regular kanban board.

Walter Buggenhout · Answer

Just a second, @Arthur Brown - let's not take shortcuts 😛

First of all: it is possible to create a board for one (or even multiple) company managed projects where you map a status to the backlog and other statuses to the board. Thus you can indeed ensure that changing the status of your issues moves them from the backlog to the first column of the board. But to do this, your board needs to be a kanban board.

When you use sprints - that means a scrum board - the issues in the active sprint are displayed on the board. I would almost status that status is irrelevant in this scenario, but that is not entirely true. If a status is not mapped to a column of your sprint board, issues will not be visible in the active sprint, even if they are assigned to that sprint.

So, that's what I meant when I said you need to consider how you want your team to work.

Since boards in company managed projects pull in issues from a board filter, you have full control over the issues you see on the board, as well as the statuses you map to columns. That even allows you to define multiple boards across a single workflow - e.g. a kanban board that shows the work in analysis - ending with a ready for development status in the rightmost column. And then a scrum board that has the ready for development status as the backlog for development work, only showing the issues that have been properly prepared.

Lots of possibilities, but you would have to have a good idea of your process before implementing.

Arthur Brown_m9f8ly · Answer

Hi, @Walter Buggenhout ,
You are correct, i want to set up my project as you describe in the second part of your message. So if i got you right, there is no possible way to do that in  a Company managed project?

Walter Buggenhout · Answer

Hi @Arthur Brown,

that is correct. A board in a company managed project is either a scrum board (which allows you to support a scrum team by creating, starting and completing sprints) or a kanban board (which is designed to work without sprints). Unlike in team managed projects, there is no toggle to turn sprints on or off.

It looks like - first of all - you would need to think through how you want to organise your team's work. Having only the work in the current sprint visible for a scrum team is exactly what you want. In scrum, the team decides what it is going to work on for the next (usally 2) weeks and intentionally does not want other work to distract them from that goal. A kanban team, on the other hand, picks up work from a prioritised backlog. They want to move work freely from the backlog to the board and this is what matches your statement that you want items to appear on the board when you change its status from Backlog to To do.

Hope this helps!