Can I Display Epics on the Scrum Board in place of Stories?

[John Shinaver]

Hey!

I hope this makes sense, but my team is in a transitional phase to scrum within a large organization that is extremely waterfall.

Because of that, our "product" as a team are out user stories, that will get handed off to Developers, after the Sprint has finished.

SO, we need a Scrum board that shows Epics within the Active Sprint, Sprint Backlog and Backlog - and not user stories.

Essentially, my question is:

• Can you create a Scrum board that displays Epics within the Active Sprint, Sprint Backlog and Backlog - and not user stories?

The team still wants to create user stories for each of those Epics, of course - during the sprint. It's just, we prioritize and assign work based on Epic - not on user story.

Thanks so much for you help!

Let me know!

John

[Everton David]

Hello, Yep, you can.

You just need to create a new board and edit Board Setting, as the image below:

After that, you need to edit your JQL, as the images below,

for example: [issuetype = Epic]

image01:

image02:

So, your board will show your Epics, or whatever you want, as the image below:

Regards!

[John Shinaver]

Hey David!

Thanks so much for your reply!

Is it possible to have the same view on the Scrum board?

I already have this view for our team on our Kanban board, using your same steps.

The steps you've detailed are GREAT for Kanban!! However, can I do the same with a Scrum board?

Thanks David!

John

[Everton David]

Hi John,
You can't,, when you are using Scrum board your view it's different, as the image below:

See below for some articles on what you can do with a Scrum board:

https://confluence.atlassian.com/jirasoftwarecloud/managing-epics-in-a-kanban-project-856846191.html

https://confluence.atlassian.com/agile/jira-agile-user-s-guide/working-with-epics/completing-an-epic

https://confluence.atlassian.com/agile/jira-agile-user-s-guide/working-with-epics

https://confluence.atlassian.com/agile/jira-agile-user-s-guide/using-a-board

https://confluence.atlassian.com/agile/jira-agile-user-s-guide/using-a-board/using-reports/viewing-the-epic-report

https://confluence.atlassian.com/agile/glossary/scrum

[Renwick Oden]

Maybe the functionality has changed.  I have a Scrum board that displays epics.

[Tormod Tønnesen]

Do you also have them in the backlog for sprint planning @Renwick Oden

The missing scrum epics is a problem for us to, we plan our backlog in terms of epics, and then developers creates stories / tasks connected to it for each sprint. We need to put epics into sprints (drag / drop in the backlog) to visualize the future release plans we have, the on/off button from kanban board should be easy to add and give us the flexibility we need?

[Renwick Oden]

Hey Tormod,

That was a while ago.  I cannot say for sure how I was able to achieve that, back then.  

That said I was able to get an epic on the scrum board with a little trickery.   I created a story, added it to a sprint and then changed the type to epic . I probably would not recommend this process as it is tedious and since it appears to violate Jira's paradigm, they could make a change that will break things in the future.  And once I changed the issue type it no longer shows as part of the sprint in the backlog view.  It still appears as part of the sprint in the scrum board view.

Good luck!

[Sumit Pandey]

Epic can be seen in active sprint if they are assigned,  as shared by @Renwick Oden in above post, however you can't see an epic in future sprint or backlog in Scrum Board even if its in there.  2 ways to see the epics, either to use Epic Panel (Vertically aligned on left side, see below highlighted in Yellow) to view epic and its progress.

OR 

use Navigator view , It will allow you to see all issyetypes linked in any future sprints or backlog even if they are not appearing on board.

See below highlighted in Yellow,

Even if you convert any other type to an Epic in an active sprint, you wont be able to see it in backlog View .. See below 

You will see Epic in ACTIVE sprint

See, backlog View: You wont see Epic here

JIRA is design in a way that Epics are only visible in active sprint (Scrum board) not in backlog  however its other way around in Kanban Board

[Clément Fiorio]

Thank you so much for those tips. I was able to create a temporary Task to start the sprint. Then, I'm able to add as many Epics as I need without going with the issue type conversion process. I configured the board to only select Epics so that the Task used to start the Sprint is hidden (this requires to do the trick for every new Sprints).