In the previous Kanban section, we mentioned that one of the key aspects of Kanban is to control the amount of work that is sent through.
To set up column constraints for your agile board, go through these steps:
- Browse to your project's agile board.
- Click on the Board menu and select the Configure option.
- Select the Columns option from the left navigation panel.
- Select how you want the constraint to be calculated in the Column Constraint option. By default, Kanban board will use the Issue Count option, while the Scrum board will not have any constraint.
- Enter the minimum and maximum value for each of the columns you want to apply a constraint to.
You do not have to set both the minimum and maximum for a constraint. Consider the example that's shown in the following screenshot, where we have set the constraint for Selected for Development to have at least three issues and no more than ten issues. For the In Progress column, we have only limited it to be no more than five issues, but there is no minimum value, meaning that it can have no issues at all. We also placed a maximum limit of 15 issues for the Done column so that we are alerted when the team has reached the threshold of completed issues and a release needs to be made:
After you have set the column constraints for your board, every time the rules are violated, Jira will immediately alert you on your agile board. For example, in the following screenshot, we have two issues in the Selected for Development column, which has a minimum of three issues, so the column is highlighted in yellow. In the In Progress column, we have six issues, and since it has a maximum limit of 5 issues, the column is highlighted in red.
Note that while Jira will highlight the columns when a constraint is violated, it does not actually stop you from breaking the constraints. It is simply a way to alert the team that something has gone wrong in the process and that it needs to be reviewed and corrected:
