How to Set Up a Scrum Board and Sprints in Jira
Practice4 minInnovialabs editorial team
In short
Create a project from the Scrum template, fill and prioritize the backlog, estimate issues in story points, start a sprint with a clear goal and realistic scope, close it honestly, and use burndown and velocity to plan the next one.
The short version
A working Scrum setup in Jira takes five steps: create a Scrum project, build and prioritize the backlog, estimate in story points, start a sprint, and close it and review the reports. The tool part takes minutes; the discipline around it is what makes it useful.
Step 1. Create a Scrum project
- Create a new project and choose the Scrum template from the software templates.
- Pick the project type. Team-managed is faster to configure for one team; company-managed is better when workflows and fields must be shared across projects.
- Give the project a clear name and a short key, for example
APP.
Jira creates a board with a Backlog view, an active sprint view and reports.
Step 2. Groom the backlog
The backlog is an ordered list of everything the team might do. Grooming (backlog refinement) keeps it useful:
- Order by priority. Drag the most important issues to the top. The order is the plan.
- Make top items ready. Issues for the next one or two sprints need a clear description and acceptance criteria.
- Split large items. If a story cannot be finished in one sprint, break it into smaller ones and keep them under one epic.
- Remove noise. Close duplicates and ideas that nobody will ever do.
A good rule: refine regularly in a short session rather than in a long meeting before each sprint.
Step 3. Estimate with story points
Story points measure the relative size of work — effort, complexity and uncertainty together — not hours. A 5-point story is roughly twice as big as a 2 or 3-point one.
How to set it up and use it:
- Make sure the board's estimation setting uses story points. In company-managed projects this is in the board settings, in team-managed projects it is in the project features.
- Use a short scale, often based on Fibonacci: 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13.
- Estimate as a team, for example with planning poker, so different views come up early.
- Anything at the top of the scale is a signal to split the issue.
Do not convert points to hours and do not compare points between teams: each team's scale is its own.
Step 4. Start a sprint
- In the Backlog view, create a sprint.
- Drag issues from the top of the backlog into it. Use the sum of story points shown on the sprint as a check against your usual pace.
- Click Start sprint and set the name, duration, start and end dates and a sprint goal — one sentence that explains why this sprint matters.
- Work from the active sprint board and update statuses as work moves.
Avoid adding new issues in the middle of a sprint. If something urgent appears, take something of a similar size out.
Step 5. Close the sprint
At the end, click Complete sprint. Jira asks what to do with unfinished issues: move them to the backlog or to the next sprint. Choose consciously — unfinished work should be re-prioritized, not carried over automatically.
Then hold a review of what was delivered and a retrospective on how the team worked.
Reading burndown and velocity
| Report | What it shows | What to look for |
|---|---|---|
| Sprint burndown | Remaining work in the sprint day by day against an ideal line | A flat line followed by a drop at the end means work is not finished in small pieces. A line going up means scope was added mid-sprint |
| Velocity | Committed versus completed story points for recent sprints | A stable completed value is your planning baseline. Regular large gaps between committed and completed mean overplanning |
| Sprint report | What was completed, not completed and added during the sprint | Shows scope changes and carry-over at a glance |
Velocity is a planning tool for the team, not a performance score. Once it becomes a target, estimates inflate and the numbers stop meaning anything.
Common mistakes
- Starting sprints with an unordered backlog.
- Estimating in hours disguised as points.
- Closing a sprint by moving everything forward without discussion.
- Judging people by their story point totals.