Build a board that matches a team's own board
Pick New board → A team's own board, as a query, choose a team, and AnyKanban writes the query that returns what that team's native Kanban board actually shows.
The board is proposed a name made of the level and the team, such as Backlog items for Claims Intake. The level comes first, spelled as your process spells it. Change the name before you create the board if you want another one, or later in the board's settings.
It is the answer to "we like our board, we just need it to do one more thing": you start from parity and then change one thing: span two teams, add a project, board a type that sits on no backlog level. None of that is possible on the native board, and on a query board it is one edit to the query. To span teams or projects, first use Move to… to file the board in the project list, because a board filed under a team shows only that team's work.
What "matches" means, exactly
The items and their order. Not the columns.
- Items. The query carries the team's own area scope, including whether that team includes its sub-areas, which is its own setting and is honored either way, plus its backlog iteration and the work item types of the level.
- Order. The backlog's own, through the process's ordering field, exactly as the native board and the backlog agree on it.
- Columns. AnyKanban builds columns from the work item states. A team's custom column layout is stored in hidden fields that belong to that team's board; the new board does not copy it. If your team has renamed or split columns, name them again in the board's settings, where they are yours. Renaming and reordering need nothing more. Putting several columns over one state needs a custom field on the work item type to record which column a card is in, which an administrator adds first; Prerequisites says how. A board that reads one team's backlog can instead be told to wear that team's own columns, split columns and swimlanes, as Who sees which boards describes.
The confirmation screen says this before anything is created, so it is never something you discover afterwards.
What was measured, and why it matters to you
The rule above is not what the documentation implies. It is what a real native board was observed to do, item by item:
- Closed items do not age out. An item closed 200 days ago is still on the native board, so it is on yours. There is no "last 30 days" window to reproduce, and a board that invented one would show you less than you are used to.
- A team's board is scoped by its backlog iteration, not only by its area path. Most teams leave this at the whole project, where it changes nothing, which is exactly why it is easy to miss. If your team has narrowed it, the generated query says so.
- Removed items are on no board. They are not filtered out by a clause; their state simply belongs to no column, on the native board and on AnyKanban's.
After it is created
The query holds the team's scope as it was on the day you created the board, and it is fixed then: you can read it in the board's settings, but you cannot edit it there. To adjust it, open Advanced on the confirmation screen before you create the board.
What happens when the team later changes its area paths or its backlog iteration depends on where you filed the board. The confirmation screen proposes A team's group, named after the team you picked. That is always the team the query was written for: pick another team in the list and the group follows it, whichever list you chose. A board filed under the team you picked follows it: each time it opens, AnyKanban reads the team's current area paths and backlog iteration, leaves out any card outside them, and says how many it left out. When that leaves no card at all, the empty board says the items are outside the team's area or iteration, never that the query returned nothing. Both name the team as Azure DevOps shows it to you. Where it does not show you that team, or the list of teams could not be read, they speak of the board's team without naming it. The list of teams is read once while the page is open, so a team renamed in the meantime keeps its old name there, as in the board list's groups, until you reload the page. A board moved to the project list with Move to… belongs to no team, so it does not move with the team: the query is the contract, and to follow a changed scope you create the board again from the same template.
You do not have to be a member of the team to file a board under it. The board is listed for people who may read work items in one of the team's area paths: in the team's own group for its members, and under All team boards for everyone else. It is always listed for you, because you created it, and you can go on changing it, as can the team's administrators and project administrators (see Who sees which boards).
Everything else is an ordinary AnyKanban board: WIP limits, swimlanes, card styling rules, the level selector, the dashboard tile.
Related
- Create a named board: what the settings offer once the board exists.
- Board another level of the same query: the level selector, and why a filtered query behaves differently from this one.
- Build a board across several teams' sprints: the next step for most people who start here.