Merge 3 Kanban-Boards with different swimlanes

Rigo Ewen August 24, 2022

Hi,

I have this challenge where we want to show multiple Kanban boards side by side to get rid of a Miro board showing exactly that.

Normally that would be easy and I would merge the Kanban board filters, the columns, the statuses etc. but here's the challenge: the 3 boards need different swimlanes.

So we got one board that shows the first phase with a prioritization in the departments and the swimlanes are for the departments

The second board handles the preparation and has no swimlanes at all

The third board handles the development and has swimlanes for the different development units.

 

Our best solution so far is having three kanban boards. Then we took a Confluence page with a table structure in which we created three columns and put a Agile wallboard gadget into every one of them to display the three boards. 

We prefer the table structure to the layout because it allows the column width to be freely defined, because the three kanban boards all have a different count of columns.

The problem is, that we don't have any possibilities to use drag and drop in those gadgets.

 

TL;DR:

Is there a possibility to "glue" Kanban boards with completely different swimlanes together and still be able to drag the cards inside one of the Kanban boards? (ideally even between the Kanban boards, but I guess that's a dream)

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Jack Brickey
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August 24, 2022

hi @Rigo Ewen , welcome to the community.

There is an anything that would allow you to view multiple boards on a single browser. I don't know if any add-ons that would allow this either but that doesn't mean one doesn't exist. The best thing I can come up with is Bring up three different browser windows and skinny them down. Not a very good solution though.

Bill Sheboy
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August 24, 2022

Hi @Rigo Ewen -- Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

Yes, and...to Jack's answer...

Out-of-the-box Jira does not support Kanban board layouts to show such an entire value stream with complex flow across multiple teams.  If this is just for a wallboard display on a large monitor, Jack's suggestion seems like a good approach...yet...

You describe being able to drag-and-drop items.  What problem are you trying to solve by doing this?  For example, does the entire value stream team have one stand-up together, facilitating such a need?

Kind regards,
Bill

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Rigo Ewen August 24, 2022

Hi @Bill Sheboy thanks for the warm welcome by you two (also at @Jack Brickey.

We try to create a board to display the whole process from the idea to the developement. The process is divided into three parts.

In the first part the departments create the idea and talk about how important it is for them. So there it's divided by swimlanes for the departments.

In the second part the whole drafting process for the demand starts and there are no swimlanes because the drafting is done on a company level. First there is a prioritization of how important it is for the whole company, then it wents into the drafting process where epics are written until it's fully drafted. Then it moves into a "Done"-column

While the drafting is in progress, the third part of the process comes into play where the epics are written, refined, prioritized and developed parallel to the drafting process. It is divided into our different service providers who code for us, so that we see who is coding for us. So this part is on a level of the developing units.

Ideally we want to have this huge board like we would have on our office wall where we just move cards from left to right as progress changes for transparency reasons.

At first I had no clue at all how I could do it, now I got a Confluence page where I included 3 Agile Wallboard Gadgets that point to 3 different kanban-boards. The problem is, that the Agile Wallboard Gadget only views the kanban-boards you can't use them like you would do in Jira.

So we always have to jump into the Jira-Board and pull the cards there. Maybe tomorrow I can make a screenshot with blurred cards so that you can see what I'm describing.

Rigo Ewen August 25, 2022

This is how it looks like in Miro and in Confluence with the integrated Agile Wallboard Gadgets where we can't drag and drop :-/verschiebebahnhof.pngverschiebebahnhof jira.png

Bill Sheboy
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August 25, 2022

Hi, Rigo!

Thanks for the additional information, and that matches my understanding of your initial question.

Jack's suggestion seems like a good approach using Jira.  Specifically, I would use a very large monitor (or three side-by-side) showing the three Jira boards.  Selecting any one of them would give context to then drag issues.  This is the only out-of-the-box way you can simulate different swimlane configurations, based on process step.

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Rigo Ewen August 25, 2022

Okay, I was afraid that there is no possibility out-of-the-box. But if you ever stumble across something like that, please think of me and let me know.

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