Can four teams share a Space and still have separate backlogs?

Question

My team has 4 pods, each with their own work area. They share a jira space, understandably, as they are all working on the same product. However, the backlog is shared as well, which makes it impossible to be organized. Is there a way to keep the shared jira space but allow each pod to have their own managed backlog?

Mikael Sandberg · Answer

You need to change the filter that the board is using in order to do that. Adding something like this should do it:

issuetype NOT IN (epic, initiative)

Melissa Brumer · Answer

great thanks - looks like epics and initiatives are in the backlog currently. I want them pulled out so I can track them on a quarterly view. What's the best way to do that

Trudy P Claspill · Answer

Hello @Melissa Brumer

Welcome to the Atlassian community.

What type of Space are you using? To get that information click the ellipses button next to the Space name in the navigation panel on the left. Tell us what the last two lines of the pop-up say.

How do you identify which team owns a given work item?

For a Team-managed space only one native Board is supported. To continue to use that one native board one solution to your challenge is to use a field in the work items to distinguish which team owns the item. Then each team can filter the backlog and the board views for the items for their team. You might use the Team field itself, or another field like Labels or a User Group Picker field.

Another solution is to create and save a filter, from the Search Work Items screen, for each team that selects that team's work. You can then create a separate board for each team based on that team's filter. In those separate boards the boards and backlogs will show only the items collected by that team's filter.

Let us know if you have additional questions on either of these options.