Epic should not be linked to sprint in my perspective

[Krishnakumar Chinnappachari]

Hello Team, 

Why does Jira or Jira Cloud, simply allows the epic to be linked to a sprint, when the definition of epic is clearly says, it spread across multiple sprints? Only Story/Task or sub-tasks can have sprints. This is really confusing. Can you pls elaborate what is rationale of allowing epics to link to a sprint and that appears in active sprints tab?

Thanks

Krishna

[Trudy Claspill · Accepted solution]

Hello @Krishnakumar Chinnappachari 

I hypothesize that it is allowed because Atlassian considered a use case where somebody would size Epics (or size Sprints) such that an Epic could be completed within a Sprint, and they did not want to prevent that use case from being implemented.

Making the application flexible enables Atlassian to sell it to more customers.

If your organization wants to block implementation of this functionality there are ways to establish governance over Jira to do exactly that.

- Disallow use of Team-managed projects (where Project Administrators can manage the configuration of fields)

- Limit who has Jira App Admin access: to limit who can manage assignment of fields to issues.

- Establish governance policies for changes made to Jira

[Marc -Devoteam- · Accepted solution]

Hi @Krishnakumar Chinnappachari 

Welcome to the community.

Any Issue Type can be linked to a sprint if the field Sprint is used on the screen.

So if you don't want Epic's to be linked to a sprint, remove this field from the screen(s) used by the work type Epic.

Or possible you need to create a separate screen or screens.

[Krishnakumar Chinnappachari]

Hi @Marc -Devoteam-  Thanks for your response. However, I am not fully convinced. My question is why is this designed like this in the 1st place, what is the rationale? Because Atlassian clearly says, epics spread across multiple sprints. Because in my organization, teams use this and this is anti pattern. I know the workaround is to use Jira automation, to get rid of this, but sometimes we don't get the required admin privileges to do such things.

[Marc -Devoteam-]

Hi @Krishnakumar Chinnappachari 

I know what Atlassian provides.

But ootb most project templates use the same screen scheme and screens for all issue types.

Best practise is to directly change this.