My users with "Manage Sprints" permission cannot create a sprint

Shannon Smith July 9, 2024

I have "Manage Sprint" permissions assigned to the project roles of "Administrators" and "Developers," and yet users with these roles are not able to create a new sprint. They are able to edit existing sprints, but they need a Jira admin to create the sprint, which is cumbersome. 

Does anyone have advice for how to ensure the correct team members have permission to create sprints? 

5 answers

1 vote
Callum Carlile _Automation Consultants_
Community Leader
Community Leader
Community Leaders are connectors, ambassadors, and mentors. On the online community, they serve as thought leaders, product experts, and moderators.
July 9, 2024

Hi @Shannon Smith , does the board/backlog you're viewing contain issues from multiple different Jira projects? You can check this by reviewing the filter of the board/backlog you are having issues with.

If so, the users must have the "Manage Sprints" permission in ALL of the source projects from which issues are being pulled into your board/backlog that you're trying to create the sprint in - you can read more about this here.

Jeramy
Contributor
July 9, 2024

@Callum Carlile _Automation Consultants_ - Good thinking. That sounds like it might be the reason.

Shannon Smith July 9, 2024

Good thought. The board does contain issues from different projects. 

I have: 

  • Ensured all projects on this board have the same permission schema. 
  • Ensured the Group = "Design" has the permission to "Manage Sprints" in every permission schema for all projects in Jira.

Still, my users cannot start a sprint. 

Another interesting clue: I confirmed that the users can create sprints on the other project boards, meaning the boards with only one project per board, so I think this is probably a good line of inquiry. I just haven't cracked it yet.  

Thanks for all the input!

Jeramy
Contributor
July 9, 2024

I had an issue like this a long time ago. I went through all of the projects and made sure my team had the "Manage Sprint" permission, but for this one project, they just couldn't do it.

I don't remember all of the details, but I believe it ended up being that the project that couldn't create the sprint had an issue in the backlog from a project that was archived. The archived project didn't have the correct permissions. 

Not saying that's the issue, but just a guess at this point.

 

Also, does the project already have an active sprint? If so, do you have the setting to allow multiple sprints enabled? If you don't, then it won't allow you to create a new sprint until the previous sprint is closed.

Callum Carlile _Automation Consultants_
Community Leader
Community Leader
Community Leaders are connectors, ambassadors, and mentors. On the online community, they serve as thought leaders, product experts, and moderators.
July 9, 2024

@Shannon Smith - @Jeramy's comment was going to be my next suggestion - you may not be able to start a sprint if there's already an active sprint ongoing (this would however be possible if you had parallel sprints enabled in the product settings).

One other thing to check - is the 'start sprint' button greyed out for your users, or is it simply not there? If the button is visible but greyed out, it indicates that it's a permissions issue

 

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Callum Carlile _Automation Consultants_
Community Leader
Community Leader
Community Leaders are connectors, ambassadors, and mentors. On the online community, they serve as thought leaders, product experts, and moderators.
July 9, 2024

Other things to check:

  • Is the sprint your users are trying to start at the top of the backlog? If not, and if you don't have parallel sprints enabled, the sprint will not be able to be started. You will need to move the sprint you wish to start to the top of the backlog page
  • Does the sprint have any issues in? You are unable to start a sprint if it's empty
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0 votes
Haris Vugdalic
Contributor
January 7, 2025

@Shannon Smith if this is still an issue for you I believe I have a solution. I had this exact same issue where users I have granted the 'manage sprints' permission just could not gain access to manage sprints on a multi-project board. The issue is likely the complexity of your multi-project board JQL.

I stumbled upon this resource which delves into this. Look under the 'Complex JQL filter query' section.

Basically if your board query contains both AND and OR operators and parenthesis are not properly applied - JIRA will require your users to have the 'manage sprints' permission in EVERY project in your instance. Even ones outside of your board query. So to avoid this make sure to wrap your AND/OR elements correctly to properly scope the access to just the projects you are explicitly listing in your JQL.

If this is still giving you trouble, feel free to share your board query and we can look at it together.

Cheers!

0 votes
Philipp
I'm New Here
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Those new to the Atlassian Community have posted less than three times. Give them a warm welcome!
November 18, 2024

Not sure if this is still an issue but I recently resolved a similar problem. The issue was an improper filter query missing parentheses around logic that used an OR keyword. I've included examples below:

Original:

project IN (ProjectKey1, ProjectKey2, ProjectKey3)
AND "Team[Team]" = Team1 OR "Team[Team]" = Team2
ORDER BY Rank ASC

 Updated:

project IN (ProjectKey1, ProjectKey2, ProjectKey3)
AND ("Team[Team]" = Team1 OR "Team[Team]" = Team2)
ORDER BY Rank ASC

 

Haris Vugdalic
Contributor
January 7, 2025

I just saw this message after posting my reply. That's exactly what the issue was for me. Great catch!

0 votes
Nicolas Grossi
Banned
July 9, 2024

@Shannon Smith This is the project role side, can you add the users role/group permissions too ?

 

Nicolas

Shannon Smith July 9, 2024

Good idea, but it did not work.

I just created a Group and gave them "Manage Sprint" permissions for the "Permission Scheme" this project uses. But when I logged in as one of the users, they still were not able to create a sprint.

I suspect there is something other than the "Manage Sprint" permission at play but I can't figure out what. 

Thank you for all your feedback, by the way. 

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Jeramy
Contributor
July 9, 2024

Per Atlassian's documentation, the Manage sprint permission grants the ability to create sprints.

https://confluence.atlassian.com/adminjiraserver0912/managing-project-permissions-1346047273.html

 

The Edit Sprint and Start/Close sprint permission settings allow users to do different things.

 

On the Permissions screen for the project, click the "Permission Helper" link in the upper right corner of the screen. It should bring up a window where you can enter a user, a Jira issue number, and then select "Manage sprint" for the feature. It will tell you why or why not that person can perform the action.

 

Also, the project is a software project and it's configured as a Scrum project and not a Kanban project, right?

Shannon Smith July 9, 2024

I checked all that. But this only checks for "Manage sprints" permission, which they do have. That's why I think something is overriding the "Manage sprints" permission when people try to create a new sprint. (It's weird because they can still start, end, and edit a sprint.) 

It is a scrum project. 

Screenshot 2024-07-09 at 1.00.47 PM.png

0 votes
Nicolas Grossi
Banned
July 9, 2024

@Shannon Smith Welcome! Are you sure that they are in the correct project role for the given project were they want to create the print ?. Remember that project roles are "por project" only.

 

HTH

Nicolas

Shannon Smith July 9, 2024

100% sure. I also logged in as a project Admin and Dev in order to verify that those users don't have the option to create new sprints. Here are screenshots from the Project Settings pages for "Permissions" and "People." 

Screenshot 2024-07-09 at 11.57.37 AM.pngScreenshot 2024-07-09 at 11.57.49 AM.png

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