How to add a task to the Current Sprint while in the Board View

[clarence]

Hi

Background 

Each morning our team reviews our sprint board in Jira (cloud / nextgen project). We organise the sprint board by user. Our sprint prioritises the work for the week. Each member gives an update on the issues/stories they are working on, we make sure it's in the right stage on the board and record any updates as comments. This works well.

Often there are adhoc (unplanned) stories that we have to include in the weeks sprint. Unfortunately this is really cumbersome and slow to do in Jira and requires leaving the board view, opening the  backlog view or in our case user story mapping view (easy agile plugin) adding a task there then navigating back to the board view. It seems like a oversight not to be able to add tasks to the live sprint from the board view. If each team member has updates to make it's really unproductive give the page loads and context switching and not a great user experience.

Ask

Is it possible to add stories to a live sprint in the board view are we are just missing a config? If it is not supported be great to know why this is? I am not sure conceptually why it wouldn't be available especially as you can add new tasks to a sprint via backlog view- just a very bad user experience. Implementation wise imagine very easy for a developer to include - simply  introducing the "Create Issue" button in the interface and setting the sprint to current sprint when a task is created. Similar to the  "Create Issue" button in the backlog view works.

Help and advice welcome.

[Leif Sørensen]

I know this an old post - but please ----- a problem this small for that many years. Regardless of reason - your clients have been asking for this in a tool they use everyday will remind them of problem with you software everyday! 

 Are you sure this is a good idea? Why not spend the few hours and release the function making life easier for all users of Jira! 

[bradley.hayes]

They have a create issue button directly on the board now. If you want to add an existing issue to the current sprint tho you still have to go to the backlog and drag it up.

[Jack Brickey]

Agree. There is a way to do this so I don't feel that adding another way is high on my list of things to add. Just my $0.02.

[Leif Sørensen]

Hi Jack (not sure I get your message, can you elaborate on the $0.002) and Bradley

I´m sorry if i missed it, but how do I find it? 

I don't seem to be able to find that option on my board!

I'm still frústrated in every standup!

It sounds like I might be for no reason :-) 

Leif 

[bradley.hayes]

Just hover anywhere under an epic in your sprint and a create issue button appears.

[Jack Brickey]

@Leif Sørensen , my only point was that we have a means of creating issues in the backlog and if we want to churn the sprint, which should be an exception condition, then simply drag and drop onto the active sprint list.

[bradley.hayes]

Absolute pain in the neck and the makes me so angry at times.

Adding additional tasks to an EPIC is extremely common because no sprint planning session is perfect and covers everything and spending 10 minutes trying to add the new task to sprint drives me insane!

I can't for the life of me understand why adding something to Sprint is so dam difficult...I don't care what reason you could possibly have, making it difficult only makes it difficult.

Please just add a menu option in the task details or better yet, just have it happen automatically when adding to an EPIC that is ALREADY PART OF THE SPRINT.

[Jack Brickey]

Hi @bradley.hayes , just an FYI - this post is rather old so it will not be seen by many folks. Only those who are watching the post (previous contributors) will see replies. As such, and given the context of your post you may wish to use the in-app feedback link or open a support ticket to share your request for feature.

With that said, I assume you are aware that you can easily click on a card in the board and enter the sprint name into the sprint field. A pretty straightforward and simple means of adding scope creep, IMO. It is worth noting that simply adding an issue to an Epic does not change the sprint. An Epic often spans multiple sprints so there is no direct 1:1 relationship between the two.

[bradley.hayes]

"Epic often spans multiple sprints "

I didn't realize epics can be in more than one sprint at the same time.

"name into the sprint field"

There is no sprint field on the task card for us, is there something we need to enable to get that to appear?

[Jack Brickey]

@bradley.hayes , regarding my comment of entering the sprint name please note that I stated "...click on a card in the board and enter the sprint name into the sprint field." So you click on the card to open the issue details view. 

[bradley.hayes]

Yes, that was clear. There is no sprint field in the details.

[bradley.hayes]

Wait.. it appears if you click it from the backlog. Just occurred to me when you said "the board". It won't be on the board since it's not part of the sprint.

So I checked what it looks like from the backlog and it's there but this still requires me to go to the backlog and search for the task I was just looking at again.

[bradley.hayes]

Also looks like that was a once-off. Cant get that sprint field to appear again from the backlog now either. Def something broken here.

[Atly Apps]

Hi @clarence, we've also wanted to be able to add issues to a board from within the board view, and we've just released an addon - Add to Board for Jira Cloud – which implements this functionality:

It's totally free for organisations with less than 10 users, and we've tried to price it very economically for organisations with more users. Please don't hesitate to contact us if you have any questions or suggestions.

[Derek Murray]

Seriously? This is a really basic feature and you are charging a fee for it? Surely I must have misunderstood.

[Jack Brickey]

@Derek Murray ,

keep in mind that @Atly Apps is an aftermarket app vendor selling addon apps to achieve things not offered or improved offerings beyond the Atlassian OOTB capabilities. They stay in business by selling their apps.

As I eluded to in my original post in 2020, adding issues in an active Sprint should be an exception condition. As such, encouraging this by making it easy to do within the active Sprint board is counter to best practices. Of course, creating an issue from any screen is simply a click away using the Create button on the top menu bar.

[Atly Apps]

Hey @Derek Murray, @Jack Brickey is correct that we're a third-party vendor creating apps to add additional functionality to Atlassian products.

Whilst we've tried to price it as economically as possible, running the app does require servers and other cloud infrastructure. Furthermore, a significant amount of engineering time has gone into making this app production-ready and usable in a variety of different different project/board configurations. We've also spent time working with Atlassian to identify and resolve several bugs that we encountered during development of the app.

We also hope to continue investing in the app with adding additional functionality and improvements over time. Please feel free to contact us if you have any further feedback or suggestions.

[Jack Brickey]

there is not a "create" or "add" to sprint capability OOTB. I think the reason is that you really shouldn't do that or at least make it a habit so don't make it easy. Just my interpretations of this. You can obviously add to a sprint from Backlog or directly from detailed issue view or the Create button.

[Jack Brickey]

?

[Derek Murray]

Agree with the OP and @Aleksander Altberg .  Everybody does it ... and has been asking for it for years.  That was one of the reasons we moved away from  Jira ... now that i've come back to it after a 4 year break I am surprised that it is still here as a "feature" ... a rather arrogant "father knows best" approach unfortunately.

Well articulated @clarence by the way.