Add Kanban board features and epics

Azure DevOps Services | Azure DevOps Server 2022 - Azure DevOps Server 2019

If you track progress on your backlog with Kanban, you can also use Kanban boards to track epics and features.

And, as with child task checklists for backlog items, you can quickly define and track the progress of child items for your features or epics. Here we see several stories defined for features, both in progress and completed.

In this article, you'll learn:

  • How to add epics and features using your portfolio backlogs
  • Keyboard shortcuts for working with the Kanban board

For information on managing features and epics as a list and examples for features and epics, see Define features and epics.

Web portal, Features Kanban board with several user stories defined

Prerequisites

Boards are automatically created when you create a project or add a team. Each team has access to their own product and portfolio boards as described in About teams and Agile tools.

  • You must connect to a project. If you don't have a project yet, create one.
  • You must be added to a team or project.
  • To add work items and exercise all board features, you must be granted Basic access or higher.
  • To view or modify work items, your View work items in this node and Edit work items in this node permissions set to Allow. By default, the Contributors group has this permission set. For more information, see Set permissions and access for work tracking.
  • Users with Stakeholder access for a private project can add work items and update status through drag-and-drop, but cannot update fields displayed on cards. They can add tasks and change task status.
  • Users with Stakeholder access for a public project have full access to board features just like users with Basic access.
  • You must connect to a project. If you don't have a project yet, create one.
  • You must be added to a team or project.
  • To add work items and exercise all board features, you must be granted Basic access or higher.
  • To view or modify work items, your View work items in this node and Edit work items in this node permissions set to Allow. By default, the Contributors group has this permission set. For more information, see Set permissions and access for work tracking.
  • Users with Stakeholder access for a private project can add work items and update status through drag-and-drop, but cannot update fields displayed on cards. They can add tasks and change task status.
  • You must connect to a project. If you don't have a project yet, create one.
  • You must be added to a team or project.
  • To add work items and exercise all board features, you must be granted Basic access or higher.
  • To view or modify work items, your View work items in this node and Edit work items in this node permissions set to Allow. By default, the Contributors group has this permission set. For more information, see Set permissions and access for work tracking.
  • Users with Stakeholder access can't exercise these board features: add work items, drag-and-drop work items to update status, or update fields displayed on cards. They can add tasks and change task status.

Open your Kanban board from the web portal

Your Kanban board is one of two types of boards available to you. For an overview of the features supported on each backlog and board, see Backlogs, boards, and plans. To switch to the product backlog, choose Stories backlog. And, to switch to the taskboard, choose Sprints and then choose Taskboard.

  1. (1) Check that you've selected the right project, (2) choose Boards>Boards, and then (3) select the correct team from the team selector menu.

    Open your Kanban board

    To choose another team's board, open the selector and select a different team or choose the Browse all team boards option. Or, you can enter a keyword in the search box to filter the list of team backlogs for the project.

    Choose another team's board

    Tip

    Choose the star icon to favorite a team board. Favorited artifacts ( favorited icon) appear at the top of the team selector list.

  2. Select Features or Epics from the backlog selector menu.

    Choose portfolio backlog level, Features or Epics

Add epics or features

Add new items to a feature or epic through the item's Action menu. For descriptions of fields used to support features and epics, see Define features and epics.

Web portal, Feature Kanban board, Open the context menu of a feature to add a story

When you have many items to add, keep entering your task titles and press Enter. If you have details you want to add about to a work item, hover over the item and press Enter.

If you're new to working with the Kanban board, see Kanban overview

For more information on working with a checklist on a Kanban board, see Add tasks or child items as checklists. You can run the same operations for the features and epics Kanban boards as you do with the Kanban board for the product backlog. These operations include:

  • Mark an item as done
  • Reorder and reparent work items

To customize the columns, swimlanes, or cards for each Kanban board, make sure you first select the board. Then, choose the or gear icon to open the Settings dialog. See these articles for details:

REST API resources

To programmatically interact with Kanban board and other team settings, see the REST API, Boards reference.