Duplicate sprint names on two different boards of the project

[Mayuresh Athalekar]

I have a project setup which contains 5 scrum teams and different boards for respective teams with very well-defined configuration to reflect the Jira tickets based on the board filter criteria.

So far it has been working fine for the last 5-6 sprints. 

For some reason, someone from TEAM B has created a Sprint in a different scrum team's board with ABC name (Team A - Sprint name - Sprint abc.1). When he/she realized this mistake they went to their own board and created same name sprint (Team B - Sprint name - Sprint abc.1). This is most likely a scenario.

Now my issue is my dashboards and other ecosystems are configured based on keyword in sprint name which is causing trouble to give correct information on dashboard (1).

I have structure application integration which is getting impacted too when group with sprint name established, unable to parse the data. (2)

If i rename the one team's sprint name, it changes other sprint name too, which is a weird issue (3).

I can not find if the 2 sprints created in the board are somehow linked due to which it is changing names when tried to rename the sprint name.

Any pointers to resolve this and detach the 2 sprints to solve above 3 issues ?

[Trudy Claspill · Accepted solution]

Hello @Mayuresh Athalekar 

Rather than having 2 sprints with identical names it is more likely that you have one sprint being displayed in 2 boards.

Sprints are not locked to a single board.

A sprint will display in any board where the scope of the board's filter includes an issue assigned to the sprint, as well as always displaying in the board where the sprint was created. So, if it was created in the Team A board, it will always display there. If it had an issue assigned to it that displays on the Team B board, then the sprint will also display in that board.

You can see all the issues assigned to the sprint by going to the View All Issues screen and executing a search for sprint = "<name of your sprint>". As you type in the name of your sprint you will see potential name matches. If you do actually have two sprints with the same name, you should see that in the matches list.

Is the sprint already active? If it is not, I would recommend moving all of its issues back to the backlog and then deleting it.

If the sprint is already active and you don't want to cancel it and start a new one, then you're stuck with it showing up in two boards.

[Mayuresh Athalekar]

The 2 board filters are working fine except, it appears that someone accidently created the sprint name of Board A in Board B and post realizing the location issue, created another of same name in Board A. The SMs started the sprints without realizing the issue and it appears there is a deadlock. If i change one sprint name, it changes other name too but backlog of these 2 sprints are team specific. This is strange to me !

[Mayuresh Athalekar]

BTW, is there way to identify the history of sprint creation etc like issue types has got HISTORY option which displays trail of changes ?

[Trudy Claspill]

I still believe that there is only one sprint being shown in the two boards.

Go to the View all issues page under the Filters menu. Start a filter using sprint = and then start typing in the name of the sprint. Potential matches will display. Example:

Type in as much as needed to zero in on the specific sprint name. Share the results with us. Do you see two identically named sprints with different ID numbers (the number in parentheses on the right)? If you see only one matching sprint then you definitely have only one sprint shared between the two boards.

It is possible that two identically named sprints were created, but the boards are still sharing just one.

Complete the above JQL by selecting the sprint, and review the results. Do you see issues in that sprint such that there are some that belong to the Team A board and others that belong to the Team B board?

If the two boards are sharing one sprint, the reason that the sprint content looks Team/Board specific in each board is that each board can show only issues that are in scope of the board's filter. 

Here is an example.

Project TEAM A (key: TA) has board named Team A board that uses the filter project=TA

Issues exist in TA project: TA-1, TA-2, TA-3

Project TEAM B (key: TB) has board named Team B board that uses the filter project=TB

Issues exist in TB project: TB-5, TB-6, TB-7

In board Team A Board you see in the backlog the issues TA-1, TA-2, TA-3

In board Team B Board you see in the backlog the issues TB-5, TB-6, TB-7

In board Team B Board a user erroneously creates a sprint named "Team A Sprint".

At this point "Team A Sprint" displays only in Team B Board, and contains no issues.

A user goes directly to issue TA-1 and updates the Sprint field to add the issue to sprint "Team A Sprint".

• In the Team A Board, now "Team A Sprint" is displayed, because it contains issue TA-1 which is within the scope of the Team A Board filter.
• In the Team B Board, "Team A Sprint" still displays because it was created in this board. But in this board the sprint appears to have no issues. This board's filter doesn't include the TA project, so it can't show the TA-1 issue in the sprint.

Now in board Team B Board, somebody changes the name of sprint "Team A Sprint" to be "Team B Sprint" and adds issue TB-5 to it.

• In the Team A Board, the sprint previously named "Team A Sprint" is now named "Team B Sprint", because it is actually the same sprint that was created in Team B Board. "Team B Sprint" is displayed in this board because it contains issue TA-1 which is within the scope of the Team A Board filter.
• In the Team B Board, "Team B Sprint" still displays because it was created in this board. In this board the sprint appears to have just one issue - TB-5. This board's filter doesn't include the TA project, so it can't show the TA-1 issue in the sprint. It will show only the contents of the sprint that are within the board's filter scope - so it will show only TB issues.

By using the Issue Search to search for the issues in the sprint you can

- confirm if there is just one or actually two sprints with identical names

- determine in which sprint the issues actually are contained.

If there really is just one sprint, the only way to solve the problem is to rename the sprint in the the B board to be appropriate for the B team. Then in the A board create a sprint with an appropriate name. Then in the A board, move all the issues from the B board sprint into the new A board sprint. The B board sprint should then stop displaying on the A board.

BTW, is there way to identify the history of sprint creation etc like issue types has got HISTORY option which displays trail of changes ?

No, there is no native method available in Jira Cloud to look at the history of a sprint to see when and by whom, or changes to the Sprint attributes like name, start date, and end date. The history of issues in the sprint when it was started, and of issues added to and removed from the sprint will be visible in the Sprint Report, but that information will be limited to the issues in scope in the board where you are viewing the Sprint Report.

With the REST API you can find the numeric ID for the board in which the sprint was created.

https://developer.atlassian.com/cloud/jira/software/rest/api-group-sprint/#api-rest-agile-1-0-sprint-sprintid-get

[Mayuresh Athalekar]

This is excellent explanation. Thank you for your time & help @Trudy Claspill ! Appreciate your help !