How to get started with kanban in Jira Software (team-managed projects)

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Kanban, along with its sister framework scrum, are the most popular agile methodologies today. By visualizing work, limiting work-in-progress, and managing flow, kanban allows teams to plan flexibly, while increasing focus, output, and transparency.

We’ve heard from some new Jira Software users that starting kanban in Jira Software can be challenging. We’ve heard your feedback and want to help you with the first steps to implement kanban values in Jira Software.

(Head’s up, in the embedded video we are demoing a team-managed project. Functionality will differ slightly if you’re getting started in a company-managed project, but the high-level concepts remain the same. If you haven’t done so already, sign up for a free instance of Jira Software and choose a kanban template. You can do so here: Kanban template | Jira Templates).

Here are a few steps you can take in Jira Software to get started with kanban:

1. At the heart of the kanban template is the board. All your team’s work is visualized and tracked here, including your backlog of work (unlike the scrum methodology, where the backlog is maintained separately from the board). Before you add work, take some time to customize the board to reflect your team’s unique workflow. You may want to add new stages to the workflow, rename the stages, or re-order them. You can do this directly from the board and change the workflow at any time.

2. Add and define your issues. Each item of work, called issues, are typically added to the first column (it may be helpful to think of this column as your team’s backlog). Add all the relevant information you have about each issue to increase visibility across the team and align on what needs to get done, and when.

💡 Customize the issue view. Within settings, you can determine exactly what information is surfaced in the issue view. Choose from a variety of out-of-the-box fields, or create your own!

3. Create work in progress limits to spot bottlenecks before they happen. Work in progress limits are an essential component of kanban. These limits set the maximum amount of work that can exist in each stage of the workflow and visually notifies the team when the maximum is exceeded so the team can adjust priorities accordingly.

4. Enable reports to ensure continuous improvement. Once your team is humming along and work is flowing, enable reports (in settings) for visual metrics about how your team is performing. Two common reports kanban teams use are control charts and cumulative flow diagrams.

We encourage you to implement these four steps when first setting up your kanban template, but there are many more ways you can refine how your team works using the kanban methodology. To learn more best practices and tips from the pros, check out this kanban guide.

We’d love to hear from you! What tips and suggestions do you have for new users just getting started with Kanban in Jira Software?

[Jack Brickey]

Thanks for sharing @Corinne Dent . For the benefit of the reader, it is worth mentioning that the video is illustrating TMP project. If using CMP things will appear different.

[Corinne Dent]

Hi @Jack Brickey - I really appreciate the feedback. I tried to make this distinction clear in the article title and within the article itself. But you're right, it should be mentioned in the video itself. We'll get this updated :)

[Jack Brickey]

geez... missed it in title! DOH! Much of what's presented here applies to CMP as well it's just appears a little bit different.

[Bill Sheboy]

Thanks @Corinne Dent 

Some other tips for teams trying to use the Kanban with Jira could be:

• How your team delivers value is how you do it; try to configure Jira to match rather than the other way around
• Jira boards do not have a way to display process exit policies, so chat with the team to decide how to make those visible
• Some teams using Kanban have a backlog to support their value stream.  For company-managed or team-managed projects, learn about board/project settings to help if you need a backlog.
• For team-managed boards, completed issues automatically drop off the board after a couple of weeks.  For company-managed boards, you can configure this timeframe, or use board filters to fine tune what the team needs.
• Consider learning about how to adjust the control chart, so you can see cycle time versus lead time, and learn how to remove outliers
• The reports in Jira can help many teams, and if you need improved measurement reports, check out the marketplace for apps specifically built to help teams using Kanban

Best regards,
Bill

[Corinne Dent]

Thank you for sharing @Bill Sheboy - these tips are awesome! Appreciate you taking the time to share them with us. I am going to bookmark these as we work on more kanban educational content.