When to move backlog items to todo list?

Question

Hello ... we're trying to use Jira Kanban board in an iterative process for capturing, managing and working on individual change requests and small projects (broken into sprints). We have multiple developers who may work across multiple applications/systems, either on individual changes or groups of changes (sprint). Different team members can each be working on different apps/systems.

We are capturing all demand items onto the backlog.  One of our contentious aspects between IT team and the business is when to move items from backlog to todo.

The business/stakeholders would have IT move items to todo asap, of course. They want their requests to get soonest to developers.  A minimum is that the backlog item must have clear requirement and estimate before it could be considered movable to the todo list.

Developers/IT planners on the other hand don't want to create a huge TODO list so as to prevent items getting old and/or becoming outdated before they get dragged into the in-progress status.

What are some strategies your all using for when to keep items on Backlog (OPEN status) and/or when to move them to the TODO (ACCEPT status) list?

Cheers,

Eric

Fazila Ashraf · Answer

From your description i understand that there is iterative process and estimations involved. Have you considered looking at Scrum instead of kanban?

As i said in my earlier comment, "If you use Scrum board, the backlog mode of the board will have the entire backlog (open) and when you plan the sprint and start the sprint, the related issues move in to the 'Active sprint' mode with columns 'To Do', 'In progress',....'Done' with the 'To Do' configured to captured the open items which are included in the sprint (considered as accepted items)"

Eric_g4yjlr · Answer

Hi ... we're using JIRA Kanban, not scrum. My reference to "sprint" is just our conceptual work iteration and not the JIRA implementation of it. Thanks.

Fazila Ashraf · Answer

Hi @Eric

Sorry, it is confusing to me.. Do you use a JIRA Kanban board or a JIRA Scrum board?

If you actually use Scrum board, the backlog mode of the board will have the entire backlog (open) and when you plan the sprint and start the sprint, the related issues move in to the 'Active sprint' mode with columns 'To Do', 'In progress',....'Done' with the 'To Do' configured to captured the open items which are included in the sprint (considered as accepted items)