01 — Advanced Kanban & Agile Boards
Jira Cloud · Data Center · Government Cloud
Proper Jira Kanban and Agile boards —
built from any field
From a team’s Kanban to the portfolio roadmap on one board app — real WIP and cycle time limits, story mapping, SAFe PI planning and value mapping, with columns and swimlanes built from any Jira field or JQL. All inside Jira, on the issues you already have.
Free for up to 10 users on Jira Cloud · 30-day trial above that · no credit card is required
02 — The problem
Advanced Kanban & Agile Boards
Where the board stops helping
None of this is a discipline problem. It is what happens when the board can only show workflow statuses — and the way your team really works lives in fields, people and priorities the board cannot see.
- The WIP limit is on the column. The overload is on a person. The board column looks healthy while one developer quietly holds six tickets.
- Stuck work looks exactly like moving work. A card that has sat in review for three weeks sits right next to one that arrived two days ago, and the board shows them exactly the same.
- The wall board had lanes for expedite and fixed-date work. The Jira board has one lane per epic, so every card competes on the same terms.
- Every function has its own board. Requirements, implementation and deployment each look great on their own board — but the gaps between them, and the work stuck there, are not visible anywhere.
- Nobody can say where the flow jams. Tickets bounce back from testing and nothing counts it, so the retro runs on impressions instead of evidence.
- Story maps and PI planning happen on a whiteboard. Then someone spends the afternoon retyping the result into Jira, and the two drift apart by Friday.
- The roadmap is a slide someone redraws every quarter. The due dates are already on the epics in Jira — nothing lays them out on a timeline.
- The portfolio says yes to everything. Nobody can see value against cost across the backlog, so the loudest request goes first.
03 — Why this app exists
Advanced Kanban & Agile Boards
A Jira board shows your workflow. Kanban needs a board that manages flow.
A standard Jira Kanban board is built on one model: columns are workflow statuses, with a WIP limit per column. That covers a lot of teams. It does not cover WIP across a whole stage, cycle time limits, classes of service, or planning techniques like story mapping and PI planning. That gap is the whole reason we built this.
| On one board | Jira Scrum & Kanban boards | Advanced Kanban & Agile Boards |
|---|---|---|
| What a column is | One or more workflow statuses | Any field or JQL — standard, custom or another app’s, including a combination of several fields |
| Column groups | — | Sophisticated multilevel column groups are supported |
| Swimlanes | By query, assignee, epic, project or story | Whatever you group work by — classes of service, teams, work types, or showing a complete hierarchy at scale |
| WIP limits | Minimum and maximum per column | Per column, column group, swimlane, cell and personal WIP |
| Work item lead and cycle time | Days-in-column indicator on cards | Cycle time across a column group, with limits that automatically flag stuck work |
| Complex flows | Every status mapped to a column | Columns come from multiple fields by a combination of various values |
| Story mapping, estimation, PI planning | — | A ready-made board template for each |
| Hierarchy support | Only epic-to-stories are supported | Automatic multilevel hierarchy mapping for complex cases at scale |
04 — What it does
Advanced Kanban & Agile Boards
A Jira Kanban board — and any agile board you can sketch on a wall
Native Jira issues, fields and permissions — arranged the way your team plans and works.
01
Real Kanban flow control
A Kanban board for Jira with WIP limits per column, multilevel column group, swimlane and assignee, cycle time limits, return counters and flow efficiency (Advanced edition) — the practices of the Kanban Method, not just its look.
02
Columns and swimlanes from any field
Build columns and swimlanes from any standard or custom Jira field — even fields from other Marketplace apps — or write JQL with autocomplete. Multilevel column groups show your whole value creation flow — and connect the boards different functions run, from requirements to deployment, without losing each team’s focus.
03
Story mapping
Lay out epics, topics and releases as a real story map in Jira. Dragging a card updates the issue’s fields, so the map and the backlog never need reconciling.
04
SAFe PI planning boards
Sprints as columns, releases as column groups, teams as swimlanes, dependencies drawn between cards — a program board for PI planning that lives on the same Jira issues the teams deliver.
05
Agile estimation and prioritisation
Estimate by dragging cards into t-shirt sizes or story points, judging each item against the rest instead of one at a time, and weigh value against cost on a Magic Quadrant.
06
Run the work from the board
Manage sprints, add sub-tasks in line, colour-code cards and dependencies, and filter and order the board — Scrum, Kanban or Scrumban, without leaving it.
05 — How it works
Advanced Kanban & Agile Boards
From a blank board to working WIP limits, in four steps
Set up a board on the Jira issues you already have — from a template, or from a Jira board you already use. Your existing boards stay as they are, and the first new one usually takes a few minutes.
1
Start from a template or your current board
Pick a template — Kanban, story map, PI planning, estimation — and point it at any projects or JQL. On Jira Cloud you can also convert a Jira board you already use: columns, WIP limits, swimlanes and quick filters come across as they are.
2
Shape columns and swimlanes
Map them to any field or JQL, group columns into stages, and add lanes for classes of service, teams or types of work.
3
Set limits where the flow jams
Put WIP limits on a stage, a lane or a person, and cycle time limits on the columns where work tends to stall. The board flags it the moment a limit is crossed.
4
Plan and work on the same board
Manage the sprint, split work into sub-tasks and follow dependencies without switching screens.
06 — Board templates
Advanced Kanban & Agile Boards
Board templates for every level, from one team to the whole portfolio
Start from a template and change anything. Each one is an ordinary board on your Jira issues — not a separate plan that has to be kept in sync. Nine are below; there are also Assignee, Components, Classic estimation and fully custom boards.
All levels
Advanced Kanban
Column groups, WIP limits per column, lane and person, cycle time limits, return counters and classes of service — the board for teams running the Kanban Method.
Team
Scrum board
A Scrum board that lets the team gradually adopt Kanban practices — WIP and cycle time limits, column groups — to make the transition smooth and frictionless.
All levels
Agile estimation
Relative estimation by dragging stories into sizes (clustering), so every item is judged against the rest rather than one at a time.
All levels
Story mapping
Epics across the top, stories underneath, releases as slices through the map — the whole user journey in one view.
Program
SAFe PI planning
Plan several teams’ increments at once: sprints as columns, teams as swimlanes, dependencies drawn between cards.
Program-portfolio
Release roadmap
Drag issues between fix versions — one version or several — to shape what goes into each release.
Program-portfolio
Roadmap
Work items on a timeline by their due dates, so the roadmap comes from Jira instead of a slide.
All levels
Value mapping
A Magic Quadrant of value against cost, for the trade-offs a portfolio has to make.
All levels
Priority board
Prioritise work across several dimensions at once, not just a single ranked list.
07 — Recognition & numbers
Advanced Kanban & Agile Boards
Rated 4.9 by the top-performing teams
From the team behind Release Management for Jira — an Atlassian Gold Partner, recognised five times in Atlassian’s partner awards.
Cloud Fortified by Atlassian, covered by SOC 2 Type II, available on Atlassian Government Cloud, part of Atlassian’s Marketplace bug bounty program on Cloud, and running inside regulated instances — banking, healthcare, public sector and defence — including Jira instances of more than 70,000 users.
Gold Partner
SOC 2 Type II
4.9★
average rating across 17 Marketplace reviews of this app
500+
installs of Advanced Kanban & Agile Boards across Jira Cloud and Data Center
2018
building Jira-native apps, every year since
08 — What teams say
Advanced Kanban & Agile Boards
What teams say about Advanced Kanban & Agile Boards
Beyond the boards themselves, reviewers keep coming back to support. Tomo Lennox calls it “the best support that I can ever remember having”; Gabor Horvath had a feature request “developed and delivered in a couple of months”.
Atlassian Marketplace
★ 4.9 / 5
“The flexible swimlanes are a real strength: we can represent different classes of service, types of work or teams without having to wrestle with Jira’s standard configuration.”
Atlassian Marketplace
★ 4.9 / 5
“I was constantly struggling to find a way to set a useful WIP limit. Here I can set it by column, group of columns, person, swim lane, or columns within swim lane.”
G2
★ 4.6 / 5
“I’ve evaluated many Jira apps over the years, and I genuinely haven’t found another Marketplace solution that offers the same depth of support for Kanban practices and flow management.”
09 — Cloud, Data Center & Government Cloud
Advanced Kanban & Agile Boards
The same boards, wherever your Jira runs
Advanced Kanban & Agile Boards is available on Jira Cloud, Jira Data Center and Atlassian Government Cloud — one Marketplace listing, one board model.
- Jira Cloud. Atlassian-hosted, Cloud Fortified, free for teams of up to 10 users.
- Jira Data Center. Runs inside your own Jira, Advanced edition by default — boards, limits and board configuration stay on infrastructure you operate.
- Atlassian Government Cloud. Advanced edition by default, for public-sector teams inside Atlassian’s government cloud.
- Your identity and permission stack. People see the issues they already have access to, through the Jira roles, groups and SSO you already administer.
| What you get | Cloud | Data Center |
|---|---|---|
| WIP, cycle time limits and return counters | ✓ | ✓ |
| Columns, column groups and swimlanes from any field or JQL | ✓ | ✓ |
| Multilevel hierarchy support | ✓ | ✓ |
| Story mapping, estimation and PI planning boards | ✓ | ✓ |
| Sprint management from the board | ✓ | ✓ |
| Runs on infrastructure you control | — | ✓ |
| Atlassian-hosted, zero maintenance | ✓ | — |
| Free for up to 10 users | ✓ | — |
10 — Setup & security
Advanced Kanban & Agile Boards
New boards on your existing Jira — nothing else changes
Nothing to provision, nothing to migrate, and nothing your teams have to give up to try it.
- A Jira admin installs it from the Atlassian Marketplace. There is no server to stand up and no separate account for your team to create.
- Your current boards stay exactly as they are. These boards sit alongside Jira’s own. A team can trial one on a single project while everyone else carries on as before.
- The board is Jira. Moving a card writes to the issue’s own Jira fields, so reports, filters and other apps see the change immediately — there is no second copy of your data to keep in sync. Remove the app and your issues stay exactly as they are.
- Security documentation is public. Declared on its Marketplace listing as not storing personal data: on Cloud it keeps only board settings, and your issue data stays in Jira. It is Cloud Fortified, covered by SOC 2 Type II and offered on Atlassian Government Cloud. The full posture is in our Trust Center.
11 — FAQ
Advanced Kanban & Agile Boards
Kanban and agile boards for Jira — common questions
What is Advanced Kanban & Agile Boards?
It is a Jira-native app — a Jira plugin, in the older wording — that adds boards Jira’s own boards don’t offer: real Kanban with column groups, WIP and cycle time limits, story maps, SAFe PI planning, estimation and value-mapping boards, with columns and swimlanes built from any Jira field or JQL. It installs from the Atlassian Marketplace and works on the Jira issues you already have.
How is it different from Jira’s own Kanban and Scrum boards?
On a Jira board, a column is one or more workflow statuses and a WIP limit applies to a single column. Here, columns and swimlanes can come from any field or JQL, and WIP limits can apply to a column group (groups can be nested on several levels), a swimlane, a single cell or a person, alongside cycle time limits and return counters. It also adds board types Jira does not have — story mapping, PI planning and estimation.
Does it replace our existing Jira boards?
No. It adds new boards next to Jira’s own and changes none of them. Both read the same issues, and a change made on one of our boards is written to the issue’s Jira fields, so the two always agree. Teams usually start with one board on one project and grow from there.
What happens if we stop using it?
Nothing in Jira breaks. The boards work on your existing issues rather than a copy of them, so after you remove the app your issues, Jira boards and workflows are exactly as they were. Custom fields you used on its boards stay as ordinary Jira fields — the app makes no breaking changes.
Does it work with team-managed projects?
Yes. Every template works with both company-managed and team-managed Jira projects, except the Components board, which needs company-managed projects.
Can a Jira Kanban board have WIP limits per person, not just per column?
Yes. WIP limits can be set per column, per group of columns, per swimlane, per column within a swimlane and per assignee. Cycle time limits flag work that has stayed too long in a stage, and return counters show how often work bounces back.
Does it support SAFe PI planning and story mapping?
Yes. Both are ready-made templates — story mapping, and SAFe PI planning with sprints as columns and teams as swimlanes — alongside agile estimation, value mapping on a Magic Quadrant, and release and portfolio roadmaps.
How many licences do we need, and what does it cost?
Advanced Kanban & Agile Boards is free for Jira Cloud sites with up to 10 users, on the Standard edition. Above that, the app is licensed for the same user tier as your Jira instance — that is how the Atlassian Marketplace licenses every app, not a rule specific to us. On Cloud the app comes in Standard and Advanced editions — flow efficiency and saved board views are Advanced — while Data Center and Government Cloud include the Advanced edition. Data Center licences start at 50 users; Government Cloud pricing is custom. Every paid tier has a 30-day free trial, and you can start it without a credit card.
Does it work on Jira Cloud, Data Center and Government Cloud?
Yes. It is available on Jira Cloud, Jira Data Center and Atlassian Government Cloud, all from one Marketplace listing; Data Center and Government Cloud run the Advanced edition. On Data Center it supports Jira 9, 10 and 11. The table above shows what differs — converting an existing Jira board is Cloud only.
Does it show Kanban flow metrics?
On the board itself: work item cycle time, with flexible limits and alerts, return counters and flow efficiency calculation (Advanced edition), so problems show up where the work is.
Is it secure? Is it Cloud Fortified?
Yes. On Jira Cloud it is Cloud Fortified and takes part in Atlassian’s Marketplace bug bounty program; it is covered by SOC 2 Type II and available on Atlassian Government Cloud. On Cloud the app keeps only board settings — your issues and their data stay in Jira. For a security review, send our Trust Center — compliance, sub-processors and data handling in one place.
12 — Relevant for you
Advanced Kanban & Agile Boards
Where teams go next
Not ready for a trial yet — start with a guide, watch it in action, or see how it scales past one team.
Guide
Getting started
Create your first board: pick a template, point it at your projects, shape the columns and lanes.
Guide
WIP and cycle time limits in practice
Limits per column, group, lane and person, cycle time limits, return counters and flow efficiency, step by step.
Guide
Convert a Jira board you already use
Keep its columns, WIP limits, swimlanes and quick filters, and add the advanced controls on top. Jira Cloud.
Watch
Video and audio walkthroughs
Short videos, plus audio overviews in English, German, French and Spanish.
Use case
PI planning in Jira
How several teams plan an increment together on one program board, and keep it in sync with delivery.
Industry
Agile delivery in the public sector
Procurement-friendly, self-managed or on Government Cloud where it has to be, with evidence kept inside the instance under review.
Get started
Build the board your team runs on — inside Jira
Start a free 30-day trial from the Atlassian Marketplace, or book a walkthrough with our team.
Free for up to 10 users on Jira Cloud · 30-day trial above that · no credit card is required