The Kanban board is populated with work items, external items, or accepted items from a backlog.
- View the phases of a process and mange work in progress.
- Move items from one phase of the process to another.
- Identify bottlenecks and work in progress (WIP) limits.
Navigating a Kanban Board
The following diagram shows a Kanban board used for tracking issues from a backlog to completion. Refer to the legend below to learn more about using a Kanban board.
- Sort
Use the sort field to organize the cards on your Kanban board by one of the system fields or by a card attribute such as Card ID, Card Title, or Card Status. If you are using a Backlog view as one of your data feeds for the Kanban board, you can sort by backlog priority.
- Search
Use the search field to perform a local search of the Kanban board and display specific cards. For example, you can search for cards by owner, ID, or keywords in an item's title. In this example, only cards with the BUG prefix are displayed.
If values are mapped to the Status Indicator field, you can search by status value as well (if the values are different). If active and inactive values are mapped, a search for active displays both active and inactive items because inactive contains the word active.
- Copy
Click the copy icon to create a new Kanban board based on the current board.
- Settings and Refresh
Click the settings icon to change the Kanban board's current configuration (feeds, columns, swimlanes, and more). Click the refresh icon to update the view if any of the cards have been changed.
- Columns
The Kanban board is divided into columns that you define when you create or alter the view. In this example, four columns (Candidates, In Development, QA Testing, and Done) have been defined and state field values for the work items are mapped to one of the four columns.
- Work in Progress (WIP) Limit
Each column on the board has a defined WIP limit. In this example, the number of items that are considered "In Development" (25) currently exceeds the WIP limit that has been assigned to that column (5).
- Collapsed Column
Click a column header to collapse a column. The short name that you assign to the column is displayed when you collapse a column. In this example, the Done column is collapsed in order to provide more space for the other columns on the board. You can still see that 6 items are considered to be "Done".
- Sub-Columns
Columns can be divided into multiple sub-columns if multiple statuses apply to a given phase. In this example, issues that are in the Coding and Peer Review states are both considered to be "In Development".
- Swimlanes
You can optionally organize cards into separate horizontal swimlanes as well. In this example, the creator of the Kanban board decided to use the Severity field to group critical items into one swimlane and high severity items into another. You can scroll up or down to view each swimlane and collapse them as necessary. If you move a card on the board and it is suddenly no longer visible, try looking in a different swimlane—the field used for organizing swimlanes might have changed during the transition.
Viewing Cards
When you are viewing a work item card:
- Click the card's title (BUG000120, in this example) to open the full item view in a pop-up window.
-
Click the body of a card to open the Item Details pane:
This provides a quick view of the item, with fields that were selected and ordered according to the author of the Kanban board. Toggle the list of fields that are displayed by clicking Item Details or Required Fields.
From this dialog box, you can also perform an Update transition by clicking Edit. After you finish changing field values, click OK to complete the transition.
- Click the avatar to view the user's contact card information. By default, the avatar for the current owner is displayed on each card. If the item does not have an owner, a user silhouette appears instead.
- Hover over the status icon in the lower right corner to view the item's current status. The icons and corresponding status values are defined when the Kanban board is created. If you do not have privilege to view the mapped status field, asterisks appear when you hover over the icon.
When you are viewing an external item card:
- Click the body of a card to open the Item Details pane. This provides a quick view of the item, with fields that were selected and ordered according to the designer of the Kanban board.
- Hover over the avatar to view owner information.
- The icon in the lower left corner of the card that indicates the item is read-only and cannot be changed.
- Hover over the status icon in the lower right corner to view the item's current status. The icons and corresponding status values are defined when the Kanban board is created.
Moving Cards
You can drag and drop work item cards from one column to another on the Kanban board (though not from one swimlane to another). If the columns on the Kanban board correspond to workflow states in SBM, moving a card effectively transitions the item from one state to another as long as all required fields are entered and the corresponding transition is available from the current state. Available columns are visible as soon as you begin to drag a card; columns that are not available are grayed out and a red icon appears on te card if it cannot be moved to a particular column.
When you drag and drop a work item card to a different column, a transition form appears to the right of the view if there are any required fields that you must complete first. Toggle the list of fields that are displayed by clicking Item Details, All Fields, Required Fieldsor Invalid Fields.
- Item Details
Displays the same set of fields that appear when you click on a card, which are designated by the author of the Kanban board. If the author did not designate specific fields to display, all viewable fields on the item are displayed.
- All Fields
Displays all the item's viewable fields.
- Required Details
Displays all of the fields that are required to complete the card move (transition).
- Invalid Fields (not pictured)
Displays required fields that are missing a value or have an invalid value.
Click OK when you have completed all required fields to finish moving the card. Click X or Cancel to stop and send the card back to the original column.
If you move a card within the same column and the column represents one or more State field values, you are prompted to select a transition to use. If your columns are organized by a field other than the State field, an update transition is performed in this scenario and you are prompted to select an applicable field value for the column instead.
Note that when you drag and drop cards, any applicable decision points that are built into the workflow are honored. This means that if you move a card, but a decision point overrides that move, the card is automatically moved to the column according to the decision rule and a message appears that explains the card was redirected to a different column based on a decision point set by your administrator.