Jira kanban board

[Vivian Abobo]

What will you recommend on your jira  kanban board when using kanban? Story points or WIP limits? I prefer WIP limits.  Please let me know your for or against.  Thanks 

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

This is going to come across as quite opinionated, but you are absolutely right to look at WIP limits.

If you do Kanban, there are no estimates.  Every card is a piece of work that needs doing, and it is the same "size" as every other card the team gets.  Issue type, an estimate of time, complexity, business value - nope, doesn't matter.  An issue is a card, a card needs doing, and it's the same size as all the others.

I regularly run into this, especially when trying to scale.  The shorter story on scaling is "by all means, include Kanban teams in your SAFe setup, don't make them change, but have a look at their WiP and throughput to see what you can draw the equivalence of".  The best place I know working a mix of Scrum, Kanban, and others, currently has a simple "1 Kanban card = 3 Scrum SP" rule.

Story points make no sense to Kanban, and nor do time estimates.  WIP limits absolutely do, and that's why they are well-supported in Jira.  (I think it could do better, but the basics work well enough for me to be able to describe a Jira Kanban board as a Kanban tool)