Explicit DoD/lane policies on Kanban boards

[David Denham]

I would like to request a new Feature on the Kanban boards - to be able to add Definition of Done / policies for each column on the Kanban board - as per the Kanban core practice.

[GabrielleJ]

You can officially submit one in the JIRA public issue tracker via support.atlassian.com.

Curious though, what do you want to accomplish with this DoD Policies for each column? You know that these columns are configured to show certain issue statuses you set them to be and each status can have "Conditions" before it is moved to that status.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

I'm curious as to what this would look like - as Gabrielle says, you're already controlling "done" by configuring the board, so all I can imagine is a textual description of the rules, which would just take up space

[David Denham]

Thanks Gabrielle. 

This is one of the 6 core practices of Kanban - making process policies explicit - and having exit policies / DoD per column is a key part of that, that many of the other Kanban vendors already have setup - eg. https://www.rallydev.com/blog/sites/rallydev.com.blog/files/productblog/2012/07/Kanban_Policies.jpeg

This allows the team to set policies and make it explicit / visual. The conditions are not JIRA conditions, but team DoD agreements, which evolve on a daily basis with some Kanban teams.

[GabrielleJ]

So Nic is right, a textual description of the rules that is displayed in the column headers. Try submitting this to Atlassian and see what they think about it  

[Shawna Schnorr]

Similarly, the sprint boards should have a place at the top for the sprint goal.

[Eshwar]

Hi, Any update to this request David. If there is a request that you have logged for it, could you please send me the link to it.

[Eshwar]

I created a request for this https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRASERVER-66282

[Anthony Crain]

I voted for your issue Eshwar. I agree this is needed. I also have policies on my Scrum boards, so it shouldn't be limited to Kanban.

For the rest: 1. I don't like my tool to enforce policies by restricting columns. We are simulating physical boards that have an any column to any column by design. Every board we use embraces that any column to any column philosophy.

2. Yes, just a textual policy is what is needed. Make it a mouse over. When you mouse over the column name, the policy pops up so you can verbally ask, either yourself or your peer, did you meet the policy?

We do this all the time in our stand ups, or even as we move work on our own. Without this feature, we have to record our policies in some word doc or confluence page, then go find it if we want to remember the policy checklists.

Make policies explicit is a great part of Kanban.

[Eshwar_R]

Its been a Year and there has been no steps from the Atlassian. It requires more upvotes to get their attention.

[Dan Driscoll]

Thousands of more votes.  <sigh>

[suganthan S]

according to me, the atlassian should make this provision available so as to explicitly call out what each state as criteria in order to move next state making sure that all the relevant activity/task is met for seamless flow and improve the overall cycle time and lead time . Besides, it will be good to show case team who is new to kanban 

[john.zak]

Fun story, but Jira Align supports this, so perhaps this isn't being ignored as much as reinforcing the upsell...?

[Anthony Crain]

Azure DevOps has this feature.

[Anthony Crain]

It is Microsoft's competitor to Jira.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Yes, and it's robustly ignored.  Like most MS offerings, it's not really a lot of use in real life.

If you're going to do Kanban, great, it's fantastic, but do it right.  One thing is a common and invariable definition of done.  So you don't need it on every board.

[Anthony Crain]

All of our teams use it. They start with a default set and improve them as their teams mature. My Jira teams are more likely to leave a column before they should because it is too inconvenient to go to the Confluence page with the default exit criteria per column.

I find it frustrating when we ask for a feature, explain how a competitor has it, only to be told it is unused or dumb that they have it. Kanban and Scrum teams make policies explicit. It is part of the Kanban way. Please stop telling us it isn't important. We post these needs because they are real and in this case, textbook.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Problem is that Atlassian do market and competitor research and feed it into their backlogs.  I know they've looked at Azure DevOps and consider it a serious competitor, but I also know they've looked at this particular function and not bothered to even put it on the backlog, so it really can't be that important to people.

For what it's worth, I don't think this one is dumb at all.  But I do see why Atlassian have it in the "nice to have but meh" section - it doesn't add a lot.

[Bill Sheboy]

Hi community!

I wanted to add some ideas to clarify the value of showing exit policies on a board.

Kanban is a pull-based system, supporting teams to make what they work on and how they work visible.  Those two things help to limit work in progress (WIP), get more valuable things done, and improve work methods.

Unlike Scrum which has a Definition of Done, Kanban has Exit Policies for each step in a workflow.  An exit policy is the list of things a team decides are needed before they can start the next step in delivery.  These policies help a team improve by:

• not pulling work before it is ready to proceed,
• identify wasteful work that could be removed, and
• find ways to reduce defects/rework by examining any earlier step where the defect was introduced.

For very simple workflows, the exit policies are often so obvious that people remember them.  For enterprise software development, there are usually many more steps to get from concept to cash.  Making your exit policies visible helps the team stay honest, find improvement opportunities, and on-board new people as the team members evolve over time.  So there is a lot of potential value to showing the policies on the board teams use to manage their work.

Best regards,

Bill

[Jack Hunter [HeroCoders]]

How would you like to see the Definition of Done or Exit Polices on the Kanban board? 

Should they be defined per project or issue type? 

I wonder if the Issue Checklist plugins could help here and if not, how we could change to satisfy the requirement. 

Thanks,
Jack

[Bill Sheboy]

Hi, Jack.

I would see those fitting to how a team works, but definitely associated to a board as the board is a visibility tool for a team's process workflow and work items, regardless of work item type or issue type.

• For Scrum boards, there would usually be one Definition of Done (DoD) for the board (aka DoD for a work item in a sprint)
• For Kanban boards, there would be an exit policy for each column/status which is not Selected or Done.  Selected doesn't need one because Queue Replenishment took care that.  Done doesn't need one because whichever ever step is before Done provided the exit policy to get to Done.

Thanks for the info on the marketplace item.  Some teams definitely use checklists to support this need.  The trick is not forcing the checking of boxes which may not fit in each situation; those differences are opportunities for a team to learn and improve their ways.

Best regards,

Bill

[Jack Hunter [HeroCoders]]

Thanks Bill, 

I think I get it now. 

Basically, each board column (except planned and done) should have a set of DoD (Exit policy) items that must be met in order to move the ticket to the next column. 

Since Jira Cloud API is limited it might be difficult for the third-party app do implement it exactly this way. However, we will see what we can do with the Issue Checklist to make it simpler.

Currently, with Issue Checklist you can define Enter policy items in the following way:
* define a checklist for the exit status
* define a validator that all the items must be completed for the following status

Thanks,
Jack

[Konstantine Shengelia]

Only workaround I came up with, works ok: http://prntscr.com/sdtt5w