How do I remove some columns from the Kanban board in TFS 2015?

Question

I'm new to TFS administration. I got a request to remove 3 columns from the Kanban board for a TFS team project created using the Scrum project template. The columns they want removed are New, Approved and Committed. I thought I could click on the gear icon on the Work | Backlog Items | Board, but there was nothing I could do to the columns in the SETTINGS dialog.

So, I did a search and I'm found conflicting results. Some on SO claim that I need to run something named witadmin (?), which if I understand it correctly, will generate a XML file of the structure of those columns in the Kanban board. I would (if I understand it correctly) edit that XML removing the columns, then somehow run witadmin again to update it. But other responses say that's wrong. I'm not sure which to believe, much less where it is I go to run witadmin. Or is there another way to do this?

Answer 1

Yes, you need to use witadmin command to do the customization.

With witadmin, you can modify XML definition files to support the On-premises XML process model. For an overview of process models and what is supported, see Customize your work tracking experience.

To run the witadmin command-line tool, open a Command Prompt window where Visual Studio is installed. The witadmin command-line tool installs with any version of Visual Studio. You can access this tool by installing the free version of Visual Studio Community or Visual Studio Team Explorer.

More details about how to use this command line, please take a look at this tutorial.

A sample for how to use the waitadmin command and customize the spring board in TFS server: How to add columns in sprint board TFS (not backlog board)