For those that are familiar with the Scrum board in JIRA Agile, the Kanban board will look very similar to the work mode of the Scrum board, with only a few differences:
- There is no backlog, or rather the first column on your board is your backlog
- There are no active sprints or sprint planning
- Some of the columns may have a minimum and maximum number, which appears next to the column name
- Some of the columns may be highlighted in red or yellow, as shown in the following screenshot, where the In Progress column is highlighted in red:
So, let's take a closer look at the Kanban board and see why we have these differences. First of all, as explained in the earlier section, Kanban does not use discrete time periods such as iterations to plan work in advance. Instead, work is being done constantly, going from the backlog to the finish line to be released. Therefore, the Kanban board does not have separate views for the backlog (or Plan mode in older versions of JIRA Agile) and the current active sprints (or Work mode), everything is combined into this single Kanban board view, which shows you everything in your backlog and the current progress as your team works through them.
JIRA Agile provides a simple-to-follow wizard to help you create new Kanban boards. All you need to do is choose if you want to create a board from scratch, or from an existing project or filter, and follow the steps.
To create a new Kanban board, perform the following steps:
- Click on the Agile menu from the top navigation bar and select the Manage Boards option.
- Click on the Create board button. This will bring up the Create an Agile board dialog.
- Select the Create a Kanban board option:
- Select how you want to create your board and click on the Next button. There are three options to choose from to create your board. These options are explained as follows:
- New project and a new board: This is the same as creating a project using the Scrum Agile project template. A new project will be created along with a new Kanban board dedicated to the project.
- Board from an existing project: This option allows you to create a new board from your existing projects. The board will be dedicated to only one project.
- Board from an existing Saved Filter: This option allows you to create a board that can span across multiple projects with the use of a filter. So, to use this option, you will first have to create a filter that includes the projects and issues you need.
- Fill in the required information for the board. Depending on the option you have selected, you will either need to provide the project details or select a filter to use. The following screenshot shows an example of creating a board with a filter. Click on the Create board button to finish:
