Editing a sprint(s)

[Sam]

On the Backlog view of our project, I can only edit the Active sprint.  The "edit sprint" choice is greyed out for other sprints, is that a configuration setting?

Also is there a place to see and edit all the sprints that have been defined for this board or project?

[Trudy Claspill · Accepted solution]

Hello @Sam 

Are you working with a Team Managed project or a Company Managed project? That information will show at the bottom of the navigation panel on the far left.

Sprints can have issues from multiple projects, so there is not an effective manner for seeing all sprints associated with a project.

While sprints are created in a board, there is no restriction on which issues can be added to the sprint. An issue that is not actually part of that board might get added to a sprint for that board. Sprints will display on any board where the sprint has an issue that is within the scope of the board's filter.

In Jira Cloud there is no easy method in the UI for getting a list of all sprints created from a specific board.

Having said all that, the ability to manage/edit a sprint can be impacted by your permission within the projects for the issues that have been included in the sprint. If the sprint includes an issue from a project where you don't have the Manage Sprint permission, that could block you from being able to edit the sprint.

[Sam]

I am unable to tell by looking at the bottom left menu of my project.  I can only see "Project settings" at the bottom left.  I tried looking thru the Summary and Details page of the project to see if it is written in long-hand, but failed at that also.  I read thru https://support.atlassian.com/jira-software-cloud/docs/what-are-team-managed-and-company-managed-projects/. but that did not give me any other indications on how to confirm company vs team managed project.

I have project administrator role for the project.  The Edit Sprint permissions has been given to Administrator.  On the board, I can only edit the sprint marked Active.  All the other springs do not have issues from other projects but I can only see the move up/down actions, edit/delete sprint were both greyed out.

[Trudy Claspill]

Hello Sam,

You should see this at the bottom of the navigation panel on the left.

It should say either "company-managed" or "team-managed" there. 

Alternately if you go to Projects > View All Projects, and find your project, its type should be displayed in the Type column.

Are you able to create a brand new sprint in this board? If you create a brand new sprint with now issues in it, do you then have the Edit option? 

Does the board you are viewing include issues from only one project, or from multiple projects?

Can you provide screen images of what you are seeing?

[Sam]

Software version I am seeing at the bottom of the screen is:

The "Type" I see is either "Software<>" or "Business" in the list of Projects.

I made a copy of the board that I was looking at to make sure I am the "board" administrator. With the new board, I can confirm that I can create new sprints and I can edit the new sprint.  However, there are still some sprints I can't edit. The ones where the "start sprint" button is greyed out. Would that be related? The new sprint that I created with no issues in it, the "start sprint" is greyed out and I can edit the sprint.  Some of the existing sprints where "start sprint" is greyed out, I can't edit.  Other existing sprints where "start sprint" is available, I can edit.

The board query only has issues from one project and I have the administrator role of that project.

[Trudy Claspill]

Hello @Sam 

Given that you see a version number for Jira at the bottom of your screens, that indicates you are not using the Jira Cloud product. You are using a self-hosted Jira product (Jira Server or Jira Data Center). In that case you are using the project architecture referred to in Jira Cloud as "Company Managed" and don't have the option to have a "Team Managed" project architecture.

Given that you can edit some sprints and not others, that suggests to me issues from other projects have been added to the sprints that you cannot edit. Those other issues don't show up in your board because they are not within the scope of your board filter.

Jira does not lock a sprint down to allow only issues from the related board to be added to it. Users can add issues to sprints from other boards by editing the Sprint field directly in the issue.

To check what issues are actually in the sprint use the Search screen to search for issues with the criteria:

sprint = "<type in the name of your sprint that you can't edit>"

As you are typing in the name of the sprint, pay attention to the autofill matches that are displayed. Jira also does not require that the names of sprints be unique. It is possible another sprint was created with an identical name, and issues have been added to the "wrong" sprint.

If you find your sprint name is unique, then review the results for issues in other projects. If you find issues from other projects, it is probably that you don't have the Edit Sprint permission for those other projects and that is what prevents you from editing the sprint. You either need the permissions, or more likely, the issues from the other project need to be removed from your sprint.

If you don't see issues from other projects in your sprint, I recommend that you contact your Jira Admins and ask them to run the same search. It is possible that the issues are there but you don't have permission to see them.

[Sam]

So sprint name is not scoped in any form, if someone within the server/site happens to use a sprint name the same as what I used, his issues will be in the "sprint" but I will not see it in my board and won't be able to manage the sprint. So we have to be very useful in managing the names of sprints throughout the company?

[Trudy Claspill]

Essentially, yes. That has been my experience with both self-hosted and Cloud Jira Software.

I always have made a point of educating the users of Jira systems I admin'd to create sprint names that reflect their board name, or team name, or product name - something that readily gives an idea of the "ownership" of the sprint. That doesn't eliminate the misuse of another team's sprint, but it has helped reduce it.

[Sam]

@Trudy Claspill thank you so much in sharing your experience on sprint.  Now I can go back to research Adv. Roadmap.

[Trudy Claspill]

Have my answers helped you determine and confirm the root cause of your inability to edit the sprints? Can you share with us what you found the root cause to be?

[Sam]

Yes, you help did provide the information I needed to understand that sprints are not scoped.  The sprints we have are used by many projects, so it would be impossible for me to gain control of  commonly used "sprints".

I was primarily hoping the sprints correct details can be imported to Advanced Roadmap automatically.  However since we are using widely scoped sprints, that would not be possible.  I need to work on other workarounds...

[Trudy Claspill]

I wanted to follow up on this statement you made in one of your replies:

if someone within the server/site happens to use a sprint name the same as what I used, his issues will be in the "sprint" but I will not see it in my board

To be clear another user can either:

- create a sprint with the same name as yours, in which case two distinct sprints exist in the system with the same name.

- select your sprint in the Sprint field in one of their issues (that is not within the scope of your board), so there is only one sprint with that name but with issues in it from multiple projects/boards.

If the user creates a new sprint with the same name, either or both of your could potentially put your issues into the "wrong" sprint by editing the issue's Sprint field directly. If you put issues from your project/board into the other person's identically named sprint, then you would see both your sprint and their sprint on your board - two separate sprints. But you would see only the issues in those sprints that are within the scope of your board's filter. If there were issues in those sprints that did not match your board filter, they would not show in the sprint in your board/backlog view.

If you have permissions to see the projects/issues, then you could see them in the sprint through the Issue Search screen as I described in a previous response.