Why an Epic in the Backlog, from another project, would not allow a Sprint to be Completed?

Question

A user could not complete their Sprint. The message was you must have permissions to these projects (huge list) in order to complete the Sprint.

When looking at the Board filter we saw that it pulled in an Epic from another project into the Backlog. This Epic contained some Storys and relationships to other projects, but it was the only relationship to the project we were focused on.

Once we adjusted the filter to remove the Epic from the Backlog the user could complete the Sprint. We did not expect that this one Epic would be the cause of not allowing us to complete the Sprint, because it was in the Backlog. Why would that be? The Sprint and its issues are separate from the Backlog.

Thomas Bithell · Answer

Thanks Branden for the answer. We know about not being able to close Sprints with issues you don't have permissions to, but we didn't think having them in the Backlog would impact the Sprint that only had issues that the project manager had permissions over.

I will note this in our FAQs. We frequently have people pull issues into Sprints mistakenly from other projects.

Tom

somethingblue · Answer

Hi Thomas,

That commonly happens because the filter pulls in issues from another project but the user does not have project permissions for that project so they can't complete the sprint.  This is summed up in  the Can't complete the sprint knowledge base article:

You don't have the right permissions: You must have the JIRA 'Manage Sprints' permission for all projects which JIRA Board BoardA include. BoardA is the board owning the SprintA.

If they do not have the Manage Sprints permissions on the other project that would make sense why the Sprint would be able to be closed once you removed the Epic from the other project.

Cheers,

Branden