Effective Kanban backlog management plays a vital role in determining the success of a project. To ensure optimum success, prioritization of work in the right order is vital. Doing the prioritization manually can be challenging and time-consuming. That is why several companies rely on Kanban backlog management. It not only makes backlog management easy but also ensures better decision-making of teams.
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Kanban Backlog: An Understanding
A product or project backlog is defined as the visual representation of different items your team may or may not deliver. The backlog is at the leftmost part of the Kanban board before the “To Do” column. Kanban backlog provides project management teams with a picture of a bigger backlog consisting of a well-optimized view of all the issues ranked in the right order.
Access Kanban Backlog in Jira
To access the Jira Kanban board backlog, you must go to the Backlog section on the Kanban board. You will find three columns. The first column on the Kanban board will be ‘Selected for Development’. The second column is the ‘Backlog’. This column will consist of all the issues that can be taken to the ‘Selected for Development’ column. It will allow your project management team to start working on those issues.
The third column in the backlog section is the ‘Selected issue details. In simple words, this column can provide you with comprehensive details of the issue that you have selected. It also allows the team members to comment, add content, and update details in the column. However, a point to note here is that the issues will be visible on the Kanban backlog only if:
- Issues are in alignment with the saved filters of the board.
- The statuses of the issues map to the Kanban backlog column and the next column.
That means if you have three columns on the Kanban board, such as ‘Selected for Development’, ‘In Progress’, and ‘Done’, you need to make sure that statuses are mapped to at least ‘In Progress’. In case you map all the statuses to ‘Selected for Development’, you will not be able to see any issue in the backlog section. You will only see the issues present in the ‘Selected for Development’ column.
Benefits of Kanban Backlog Prioritization
Within the Kanban product backlog, everything should be presented systematically. It ensures that the team members easily achieve all the tasks with less effort. Prioritization of the issues makes it easier. Prioritization of the Kanban backlog is about dragging and dropping the issues to rank it. To prioritize an issue, all you need to do is to right-click on the issue to view the menu. It will allow sending the issue to the bottom or top of the backlog.
Here are some of the prominent benefits of prioritizing the backlog in Kanban.
1. Better Self-Management of Teams
Prioritization of the Kanban backlog allows better self-management of the project teams. That means no longer will the project manager have to order or assign tasks to the team members. The team members will automatically know which task to work on next. It is mainly due to the CoS and sequencing policies. Without waiting for the project managers' orders, the team members can select the right tasks and start working on them. It can help in saving time for both the project managers and the team members.
2. Transparent and Consistent Decisions
The process of ordering the different items on the Kanban backlog is explicit. It is because all the team members understand the prioritization policies well. This helps make the project management process more consistent while ensuring transparent decision-making.
3. Reduces Backlog Maintenance
When the situations and circumstances change, you will have to make certain adjustments to your projects. However, with backlog prioritization, maintenance becomes easy. The project managers will not have to manually reorder the items present in the backlog. It will automatically get arranged to match the new prioritization criteria.
Maintain Kanban Backlog
Maintenance of the Jira Kanban backlog is vital for the success of a project. Maintenance is all about reassessing user story criteria on a regular basis. The classes of service of the user stories are not constant. A fixed delivery date or an intangible task can become an emergency if neglected for a long time.
An effective way of maintaining the Kanban backlog is by cleaning up the old tasks present on the backlog on a monthly basis. All you need to do is remove the tasks that are older than 6 months. If your team has not dealt with a specific item for about 6 months, then there is a chance that the task is no longer important. So, deleting those tasks help.
In the Kanban approach, there is no need for manual backlog reordering. The consistency and transparency of prioritization decisions help in the efficient management of the Kanban backlog.
Using Kanban Backlog
There are a number of ways your project management team can use the Kanban backlog. Here are some of the most common tasks that you can do using the Kanban backlog.
- Add issues to the Kanban backlog.
- Prioritize the issues present on the Kanban backlog.
- View and make edits to the details of the backlog.
- Create different subtasks.
- Transition the issues.
- Split issues
- Find issues.
- Delete issues.
- Organize user stories.
- Plan versions
- Select specific issues for the project management team to work on
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Kanban for Backlog Refinement
When a certain idea becomes important, you will have to collect more information about the idea. It will help you in deciding whether to implement the idea or not. That is exactly where the Upstream Kanban comes into the picture. The Kanban consists of Upstream or Discovery and Downstream or Delivery process. The Kanban backlog is present to the left of the Discovery process.
The core aim of Upstream Kanban is the refinement of the ideas present on the backlog. You can leverage set-based decision-making in order to evaluate the options for the development of a service or product. It helps you in deciding whether the idea is viable for you and be able to deliver value to the customers. In case the idea is not viable, you can discard it.
In case the idea is viable, you need to move it to the Delivery Kanban. It is the place where the actual work happens. One of the major benefits of the Delivery process is that it lowers the likeliness of abandonment of work and generation of waste. It is because there is a commitment to provide the service or product to the end customers.
Kanban backlog can be used as an excellent planning tool. It can help the product development team to efficiently prioritize ideas and even customer feedback. The marketing team can also leverage Upstream Kanban in order to refine the Kanban backlog. In addition to these, Kanban backlogs are helpful in the planning of the initiatives and the team.
For instance, you can make use of the Kanban backlog to plan and manage different campaigns for your marketing team. It can provide you with a clear idea about the campaigns that are to be executed first. However, it also ensures that you do not lose track of the tasks that are to be done at a later point in time. This allows for better planning and management of different tasks. Apart from marketing campaigns, you can also use them to plan various other tasks.
Conclusion
By now, you must have gained comprehensive knowledge and understanding of the Kanban backlog. It is an effective and efficient tool that allows better management of different ideas and tasks. It makes it easier for your project management team to prioritize tasks and easily decide what to do next. It can help in avoiding confusion and increasing the chances of success of the project. If you want to learn more about Kanban, completing KnowledgeHut best Kanban certification can help.
