Ordering of stories with a Kanban-Board

[Thomas Hamacher]

Hi,

we are running a Kanban-board for our project.

Unfortunately I didn't find any way to change the ordering of my stories, which left the backlog (and therefor also changed the status from `BACKLOG` to `SELECTED FOR DEVELOPMENT` and later into `DOING`)
When I'm still in the backlog-view all the stories in `DOING` disappear, but only the `SELECTED FOR DEVELOPMENT` stay there. As well as the subtask (which looks quite confusing, as they don't have the right parent anymore, but some random other story, which has the correct status).
What is really hard now is that I have to change the stories to `SELECTED FOR DEVELOMENT` again to let them reappear and consequently be able to change the ordering (their rank). After doing that I can then reset the stories to `DOING` again.
Is there any chance to keep all the stories in the top `open`-pane until the are `DONE`? How would I do that?

Thanks!
Thomas

P.S. When I create a SCRUM-board, I don't have this issue at all.

[James Traxler]

Create an additional board and set it up so that that all of the statuses you're interested in are in the backlog page (i.e. including In Progress, etc.). You do have to leave at least one in the board (e.g. Done).

Now you can use your additional backlog page to rank the items, even when they've moved on in status.

Going back to your original board, they will still show as expected (only now ranked how you want).

...Oh, I've just seen a similar answer (Trudy's) - but only using the Kanban board. I'll leave mine here, as it might be nice to know that you can still use the Backlog page.

[Bill Sheboy]

Hi @Thomas Hamacher  -- Welcome to the Atlassian Community

You seem to be asking two questions:

1. What is the ordering of issues on the board?
   • The issues are ordered by the filter, often something like project = myProject ORDER BY Rank.  If you use swim lanes, that ordering can be disrupted.
   • For Kanban, the best way to preserve the Rank order is to move items selected for work to the top of the backlog *before* adding them to the first column on your board.
   • As @Trudy Claspill notes, sub-tasks are a bit odd, and you cannot easily see/adjust their relative ranking.  Depending on what you show on the Kanban board (issue types and swim lanes), they could be shown below a parent.
2. Can I see everything on the top of the backlog (which is in progress on a Kanban board) until completed, as I can with a Scrum Sprint?
   • No, you cannot.  A Scrum sprint is different as that shows the planned scope for the sprint.  There is no equivalent, fixed scope of work for Kanban as that is a pull-based method.  As soon as work moves to "in progress", it would no longer appear in that "to do" area at the top of the backlog.

Best regards,

Bill

[Thomas Hamacher]

Thanks for that answer.
Concerning 1:
Yes, we do have `myProject ORDER BY Rank` and swimlane is set to `Stories`.
I think what you describe is exactly my work-around. We rank them (in status `SELECTED FOR DEVELOPMENT`) before we add them to the first column of the board (which would in our case be `DOING`). But sometime it happens, that we have to reorder our work (e.g. a more important task jumps in, which we want to add to the very top or somewhere else). And in this case we are stuck and currently we are solving this by setting all stories back to a status, where we can rank them. This is what I would like to improve! Is there anything else I can do?

Concerning 2:
Thanks for clarification. I totally understand the concept behind this. It is more related again to the problem of ordering. As during `in progress` we don`t have a chance to reoder them as they are gone from the top-backlog (where I would usually do it.)

[Bill Sheboy]

Hi, Thomas.

For a Kanban board's item ordering, you note a scenario of moving items higher in Rank.  On the board, you can select an issue and right-click > Top of Column to move an item up. 

That would prevent the need to move items backwards in flow to change rank, and then move forward again.

[Trudy Claspill]

Hello @Thomas Hamacher 

Welcome to the community.

I'm not sure if I have understood your question, but see if this helps.

If you are looking at a Kanban board with Backlog enabled, the issues that display in the Backlog screen in the Backlog list of that screen are the issues in the status that is mapped to the Backlog column for your board.

The issues that will show on the Backlog screen in the section above the Backlog list are the issues in the statuses mapped to the left-most non-empty column.

If you want issues with different statuses to appear in those sections, you have to map the statuses to those columns accordingly.

Subtasks are a little odd in that they show in the Backlog screen indented below their parent story, usually. But if the parent story is in a different status than the subtasks and in a different section of the Backlog screen, then the Subtasks will still show indented but will appear below a different story. This can be confusing. The subtask is not actually attached to that different story. I haven't found any way to address that besides keeping the Subtask and parent Story statuses the same.

[Thomas Hamacher]

I think, this is exactly referring to the problem we have.

As we can reorder only tasks in the backlog that are in states assigned to "Kanban Backlog" or "TODO", they don't show don't show up anymore in any other state, which makes it then impossible to reorder them.
Or is there any way to assign the states and still have them in the correct column and backlog?

[Trudy Claspill]

@Thomas Hamacher 

Here's an alternate solution to consider.

Create a second Kanban board that uses the same filter as your primary board.

In the second Kanban board DON'T enable the Backlog screen.

In the Columns setting for the second Kanban board add ALL statuses to one column.

With all statuses mapped to one column in the second Kanban board, you can use the second Kanban board to rank all the issues regardless of status. As you rank them in that second Kanban board, the ranking changes will be reflected in your primary Kanban board.

[kingmi]

@Trudy Claspill you mam,  are a legend!  This has been killing me.  Now I can rank the swimlanes in order of priority by having an admin only ranking/prioritising board.