Multiple status in each column on Kanban

[gdonato]

Is there a way we could configure our Kanban board in Jira to have multiple status? (see snapshot below)

[Vijay Khacharia · Accepted solution]

Hi,

In JIRA Agile, it is possible. Just go to configure board -> Columns and drag and drop as many statuses as you want in each column.

https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/AGILE/Configuring+Columns

Vijay

[Jeroen Thoelen]

Hi,

I am not able to split up a column like showed on the snapshot (E.g. split the column "testing" in ongoing and done).

Can you provide me the steps to do it, to visualise it like the snapshot above?

Much appreciated!

Thank you.

Jeroen

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Jira does not do this column splitting.

[Brook Warner]

Which makes no sense, as this is a fundamental function of Kanban

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Wrong, it's not fundamental. 

But it would be useful.  There's a request open for it.

[Brook Warner]

Sure, let me rephrase - reporting the status of an object is the fundamental point of Kanban. If users can't make more than 4 columns in Jira, how can they provide this reporting for complex pipelines that require more than 4 options?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

They can make as many columns as they want.

They can not (yet) group them as per the diagram above.

[Brook Warner]

How? The only way I can see is to create a status for each column which equals the column name, but then I can't set a WIP limit for these new columns?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Go to board admin and add all the columns you need.  Then add the status to the right columns.  Then set the limits.  It's all on-screen in front of you, so I'm not sure where you are stuck.

[Brook Warner]

So turns out you have to leave the page, and come back to it.

[Chrisanthi Ikonomidou]

Hi,

Is there a status for this request that you mention @Nic Brough -Adaptavist- do you maybe have a ticket number for it so I can follow the progress? Splitting up columns is something I am looking into right now and would be interested in seeing when this might be possible in Jira.

Thank you

[Holger Winkelmann]

@Nic Brough -Adaptavist- you mention is not YET there. DO you know more? as said by @Brook Warnerhaving this sub columns is a fundamental concept in Kanban. The whole concept of the pull system relies on this.

We are currently a Redmine Agile plugin user want to move the teams to the atlassian suite. The Redmine guys have solved this via the name of the Status diveded by collons. It's a bit hacky but works.

This would be in the Sample above to have the following Staus configuration

- Backlog

- ToDo

- Developmen:Doing

- Development:Done

- Testing:Doing

- Testing:Done

- Done

The Board renders this as seen in the picture

As we now we can as many status we want in Jira Agile,. Very first Hack for "grouping" them could a option to give columns a color. Is this possible?

Holger

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

There's a request for grouping up columns like this in boards, but last time I saw it, it only had a couple of votes and was way down on the list. 

[DaggarwalEQX]

To have Ongoing/Done for each activity is important. Why?

The whole idea of Kanban is to have different states which illustrate a journey of a task and most often different columns are carried out by different teams. Unless there is a Done column, the next vertical wouldn't be aware of picking up things. Since JIRA needs to map ticket statuses to columns, it can only be achieved by having Dev:Ongoing, Dev:Done, QA:Ongoing, QA:Done etc. Surely, it can be done by having independent stautses mapped to columns, but being able to achieve the picture gives a great aesthetic touch. It would need some logic though like Dev:Ongoing means an Ongoing state of Dev.

[Jean Spencer-Young]

Hi,

It seems to me this same question has come up in different ways over the last four or five years and not to have any kind of resolution or "fix"...

For me I would "express" it as being able to replicate the same status in multiple columns. I want to have my Kanban columns follow the required organisational workflow e.g. To Do - In Planning - In Design - In Consultation - In Implementation - Done

But within each of the workflow phases of Planning, Design, Consultation and Implementation I want to be able to have the task status reflect our functional process of "In Progress", "Awaiting Review" (this is different to consultation), "In review", "Blocked", "On Hold" and "Handover". It's basically like a workflow within a workflow, but the nested team workflow is applied uniformly across the main organisational workflow.   

I know I could make four versions of the status e.g. "Planning in Progress", "Design in Progress", "Consultation in Progress" etc. but that is really cumbersome and long-winded and kind of defeats the object of being able to break down the workflow with columns and then apply multiple statuses to a column? 

The only other alternative I can think of is to have different boards for each of Planning, Design, Consultation and Implementation Phases where we use the functional team process as the column name, but that doesn't work for my team as different workstreams/sub-teams are at different stages of the organisational workflow at different times and we need a Kanban that shows the view across all workstreams instead of four separate boards, or some on the Planning board, some of the Design board and no-one on the Consultation board yet etc. Some are "In Progress" with Planning and some are "In Progress" with Implementation. In my experience this is the case the larger a project becomes, the more people who are involved and the more wide-ranging the program/portfolio is.

Maybe what I need, especially for large, complex, organisation-wide projects is to collapse boards into one another or to reflect nested processes in one overarching, high-level board so I can get a wider, cross-company view...

Whatever the case, it seems to me there is demand for it, so even if Atlassian disagrees with the approach, surely customer demand and need should drive the development of a solution?

Thanks.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

>For me I would "express" it as being able to replicate the same status in multiple columns.

Please, don't express it that way.  It is not what we're talking about here, and it would make your boards complete nonsense.

Look at an issue.  Is it "in progress" or "in progress"?  Do you really want it to appear twice on a board at different stages in the process?

What we want here is for boards to group up columns together.  We do not want the issue status and hence workflow to become completely useless.

[Holger Winkelmann]

The nested workflow sounds overloaded but in essence the doing and done sub columns are exactly that. Even it is the most simple workflow you can imagine.

Further, if you do Kanban in practice you are forced with blockers which needs to be parked because of external dependencies. This would be another sub state. 

These states often are placed on extra areas of the real physical Kanban boards. There not many online Kanban boards support such flexible layout. LEANKIT is one of them.

In jira I assume that jql is the right tool to select the task for all such columns. There are just a few layout options missing. Like grouped or merged columns.