Issue count after migrating scrum to kanban

John Blythe January 22, 2018

hi, all.

 

we've been doing a scrumban sort of approach to our workflow for a while now, but have stuck it out with the scrum board. i'm trying to now move over to a kanban board for the sake of simplicity and less emphasis on sprint dates / more emphasis on the CI aspect.

 

the problem is that i have some 5000 issues now showing up in my kanban board. i think i could handle this by updating my filter query to be a bit more robust, but my confusion comes in at the point that my scrum rapid board view shows only 45 total issues, 11 in the current sprint and the rest in the backlog. when i use that same query for kanban i still get the excessive 5k issue count.

 

tldr: my kanban board is super bloated yet my scrum board isn't, this despite having the same filter query in place for both boards.

 

thanks for any info!

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Ignacio Pulgar
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January 22, 2018

Your Scrum board probably has at least one status not mapped to any columns.

May you check it on Board > Configure > Columns?

If that's the case, replicate the same status <> column mapping in your kanban board and, voilà! The same issue count should be expected.

Hope it helps.

John Blythe January 22, 2018

i moved some things around on the columns and it's definitely shaping up. thanks! more info posted below, too

Ignacio Pulgar
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January 22, 2018

Another factor that might be causing discrepancies in the issue count between boards is that Scrum's backlog won't show any issues which status is mapped to the last (most-right) column.

Ignacio Pulgar
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January 22, 2018

Also note that Scrum backlogs do not show issues of type sub-task.

John Blythe January 22, 2018

what's the general/best practice for kanban to avoid having a ton of issues present in Done?

Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
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January 22, 2018

Release them.  The sub-filter on a Kanban board is, by default, "issue has no fix version".  When you click the release button on the done column, it will ask you for a fix version, which is put on all the done issues, which hence hides them because of the sub-filter.

You can also change the sub-filter (e.g. issue is resolved), but that means setting the data by hand, or having a done column that is always empty (if, for example you went with "issue is resolved", and automated it being set with a post-function, then the issue would vanish when dropped into "done")

John Blythe January 22, 2018

thanks, nic. makes sense. question then is how would be best to update a lot of vestigial stuff that may in fact be released? tag them to some release that has been marked as released in Releases?

previously when i'd create an issue i'd set the Fix Version to be whichever version i was planning the story to be released with. it was, then, a preemptive marker. it sounds like i should now use that as a means of associating completed, released items as such. is that right?

Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
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January 22, 2018

Yes.  The use of versions between Kanban and Scrum is quite different.

John Blythe January 22, 2018

should all my versioning now be done on the backend of a batch of completed items rather than prior?

Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
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January 22, 2018

For Kanban usage, generally, yes, as a version represents the point at which you complete a batch of issues and they're ready to go out.

John Blythe January 22, 2018

cool, will move in that direction from now on. thanks for the help, guys. here's to some greater efficiencies for my team!

John Blythe January 22, 2018

i think i spoke a little too soon on my resolution.

things are now disappearing once they hit the DONE column. i'm guessing this is related to my filter query including `resolution = 'Unresolved'`. going into DONE resolves it.

the question now becomes either:
1) if i remove the Unresolved part of my query and let kanban's release trigger be what gets things out of my board, is there a way for me to quickly 'release' all the issues older than x days/weeks via the Issues tab?

2) should i change the workflow so that moving something to the Done column doesn't change the resolution status, doing the Release action in a board moves it?

thanks for the continued patience and help!

Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
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January 23, 2018

1) The "release" button is probably going to be the easiest way forward, and that stamps a version on to the issues, which hides them.  To tidy up what you currently have, I'd step away from the boards for a minute. 

Make a note of the board filter of course, then use that with "issue search" to find issues you want to release.   At the top of there, you can use "bulk edit" to set the version on the issues you want to (I'd add "and fixversion is empty" to the filter so you don't affect already released stuff, and maybe other qualifiers so you can ignore stuff you want to keep open.  The bulk-edit is a two-step select - you select via a filter, then you can add/remove individual issues in the results list.

2) Please be careful not to say "resolution status" when talking about Jira - the two words have specific and separate meanings, it's unclear whihc you mean.  But, either way, your workflow probably should set resolution and status to an "end" one when it moves into "done"

John Blythe January 24, 2018

that did the trick. bulk edited a few thousand issues and now i'm free and clear with my kanban board.

thanks for all the tips!

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Warren
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January 22, 2018

Hi John

What status are these extra issues in? Taking a few as examples, have these already been worked on, or are they in the backlog?

John Blythe January 22, 2018

mainly in the todo/queued column and Done column.

i've got the to-do and queued sorted out for now, i think, per @Ignacio Peluffo's suggestion, but the Done column is still a bit wonky.

in my Scrum column definitions i have 673 DONE and 4241 RESOLVED. yet none of them show up in my scrum board's backlog, they only show up in their respective column (i have Done and Resolved statuses split in the same Done column) when they're part of a current sprint.

in the kanban board, however, i have my columns configuration page showing 193 resolved and 0 done. yet in the actual live kanban board view i have 95 total entries. this, too, is after updating the filter query to have `resolution != 'Resolved` in it.

scratching my head on this one. 

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