How can I see my Column titles in other areas of Jira like our Portfolio, Structure, task board, etc

Question

Hi all. I work for a very large organization with a very controlling workflow governance. Our statuses are what they are, so I wanted to preface this as adding statuses is NOT an option.

It would make more sense to our teams to see the titles they see everyday throughout the system as they do not care about the behind the scenes mapping. We encourage our team members to use the boards and not the forms to ensure issues flow into the appropriate columns.

I've also seen conversations regarding mapping a status to multiple columns which would also be helpful. Again, no control over adding new statuses, but I could add multiple columns mapped to an In Progress status or Test Integration. My board can't evolve.

Jira is controlling how we work instead of it actually supporting our process.

Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Answer

Ok, your organisation is broken.  To ask people to work in an Agile fashion, and then block them from using the tools they have is a clear indicator that the management is failing.

This is the sort of environment that Jira often thrives in.  To work around the broken rules, people install it on local machines and ignore the centralised system which is failing them.  Thing is, it CAN support you and be configured to do what you want, but that is blocked by your managers.

I can't help you fix your organisation (well, I could, as Adaptavist does consultancy) as what needs to change is the poor attitude to helping you work properly.  At the very least, you should have simplified workflows, but ideally, admins who are allowed to configure it to meet your needs.

Nikki Bridwell · Answer

Again, it's a VERY large organization - change comes slowly while teams evolve each sprint. I worked at a smaller organization where I could add statuses as I felt the need. I'm limited to a set number of statuses. So in your situation, not having the ability to just add a new status as you felt fit, how would you handle adding a 7th or 8th column to your board -  to accommodate your evolving process? You'd go to a different tool?

This is mostly an issue with our Features - they run through a lot of stages.  I'm tapped on status, therefore I cannot add UAT or Warranty Period.  I want to track that these items are in a different stage. They will not deploy until they finalize UAT.  We may or may not identify changes that we want to include or just backlog the others.

I've seen a lot of post requesting changes and users backing each other. As a tool that supports Agile, I don't see that user feedback is appreciated over ridiculed and defended.

Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Answer

You need to work with status.  "Our status are what they are" is an indication of a broken organisation.  You need your status to represent the steps in your desired processes.

Column names won't cut it.  Boards are individualised views of sets of issues, and the column names are useful only in the context of the board they are describing.  They are labels, arbitrarily set by the owners of boards, for helping people use that board, and are hence useless outside the board.

A simple example is that I've got two teams working for me on one set of issues.  Each team has their own board, and their board columns are defined to suit them.  They both have six columns, they have different status in these columns, and apart from "done", the columns have different names.  Using those columns in other places would be complete nonsense.  Not only do they mean different things, they contain different status.  That simply won't work for portfolio, structure, and everywhere else.

As for "one status in two columns", that tells me that you are not using boards to represent process.  You might want to look for a different tool if you have a need to use something board like for a non-process view.