Project has many issues, but Kanban board is empty

[Aren Cambre]

I have a board in a software project in Jira cloud. The project has a few tens of issues. The Kanban board is empty.

This is the Kanban board that came with the project.

I checked the board's settings and see this:

• Board > Custom filters has no filters.
• Board > Columns and statuses only shows TO DO, IN PROGRESS, and DONE columns. These are the three statuses of issues in this project. Within each column is a sample issue type that I think would have been in the Unassigned statuses column had it not been in the correct column.

I see no other settings that could possibly block all cards from appearing on this board.

[Trudy Claspill · Accepted solution]

Do you have the Backlog feature enabled in this Team Managed project?

For the tens of issues in the project, what statuses are those in?

[Aren Cambre]

Yes, Backlog is enabled at /jira/software/projects/[key]/settings/features.

And I am going to mark this as the answer as you led me to the problem. While all open issues have statuses that are represented on the board, they are in the backlog. I have to drag them up to the Board area for them to be visible on the board. Argh!

[Trudy Claspill]

Yes, that is the case with Team Managed Kanban boards that have the Backlog enabled. To show the issue on the Board view you have to drag it to the Board section shown in the Backlog screen.

I've often wondered why Atlassian designed Team Managed projects like that.

[Aren Cambre]

What Atlassian calls a "team-managed project" was at one time meant to be a replacement for an older project system. At some point, they switched course and kept the new and old but named them team-managed and company-managed.

This convoluted path to get to the current state means there are differences in project types that don't track the naming. This is an example: there is nothing about team vs. company management that would cause this behavior to fit in either model.

[John Funk]

Hi Aren,

What type of project are you using? Team-managed? Company-managed? Jira Work Management? 

Also, can you include a screenshot of the Board Settings on the Columns tab?

[Aren Cambre]

Sorry that I left that out! It's a team-managed product per what's on bottom left of /jira/software/projects/[key]/settings/details.

Here's the requested screenshot: