How to create multiple 'TO DO' columns of different names on a next-gen Kanban project?

[Farhim Ferdous]

I have created a next-gen Kanban project. The issues under an epic are by default placed in 'TO DO'.

When I create a new column, it is recognized as 'In Progress' as shown in the progress slider on the Roadmap. I need to have multiple columns with 'TO DO' status (like 'TO DO Dev', 'TO DO Business' etc.), issues from which can directly go to 'In Progress' column without needing to traverse all the 'TO DO' columns.

Yes I'm new to Jira.

Thanks in advance.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Accepted solution]

You don't really.  To-do means it needs some attention.  It has nothing to say about who should be looking at it.

Generally, you should think of a board as being a team's work.  That would, from what you've said, mean having a board for developers and another for the business team.

[Farhim Ferdous]

My team is cross functional, but there is benefit in having separate columns for each department. I'm guessing having a separate board would call for a separate project, which is an overkill for us, as both departments follow the same roadmap.

All I'm asking is - can it be done?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

That's fine, but it is the wrong thing to do as a column.  Columns should represent where something is in a process, not conditional stuff like who should be looking at it.

You should use fields on the issue to indicate the team, and then use swimlanes based on that field to separate them out.

[John Funk]

Agree with Nic - don't use columns for something they are not intended to be and introduce bad habits to the team. 

[Farhim Ferdous]

Alright.

Although it's not exactly what we were looking for, it works. Thanks for the headers!

Best wishes!

[John Funk]

Hi Farhim - Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

What you if you created Components for Development and Business (or whatever you want to call them). Then you could have a single To Do column and a single In Progress column but you would know who is supposed to work on them or pull them. 

[John Funk]

You can have separate boards within the same project but you will need some way to differentiate between the Dev and Business issue either way. You could use components for that and then just base each board filter on the component type. For example:

Project = ABC and Component = Development

Project = ABC and Component = Business

[Farhim Ferdous]

Hi John! Thanks for the welcome!

'Components' sound like the thing we need. Could you summarize how we could apply it to our use case? I can't seem to find any documentation on the 'Components' of next-gen projects.

[John Funk]

Ah, I missed the part about being Next-gen. You will not be able to use the out of the box Components field. But you can use the Labels field to do the same or create a new custom field with a select list of values. 

Unfortunately, you cannot modify the Next-gen board to use a different filter or to modify the filter if you want two different boards.