Scrum Board in Jira Explained (Columns, Cards, Moving Work)
What a Jira scrum board shows during a sprint: the columns, what is on each card, and how work moves from To Do to Done. A short tour on a real Jira board.
Step by step
The board
- Scrum board. The scrum board is where the team sees the sprint every day. Here is how to read it and how work moves across it.
- Full screen. First, give the board more room. Click Full screen.
- To Do. Each column is a status. To Do holds the work nobody has started yet.
- In Progress. In Progress holds what the team is working on right now.
- In Review, Done. Then come In Review and Done. Work normally moves from left to right.
The cards
- A card. Each card is one story, task or bug. The title tells you what the work is.
- Epic and key. Under the title are the epic the card belongs to and its key, like SCRUM-9. Use the key when you talk or write about a story, so everyone means the same one.
- Story points. The card also shows its story points. This one has 3, which means a small to medium piece of work.
Move the work
- Drag to move. When someone starts a story, drag its card from To Do to In Progress. Jira saves the new status straight away. The card now sits in In Progress, and the whole team sees the change at once.
- Complete sprint. At the end of the sprint, the team clicks Complete sprint. Any work that isn't done goes back to the backlog or into the next sprint.
Recap
- Columns, cards, drag. Columns are statuses, read from left to right. Each card shows the title, the epic, the key and the story points. Drag a card to another column to change its status.
Common mistakes
- Not moving cards as work changes. The board is only useful if it matches reality. Drag a card as soon as work starts or finishes, so the team doesn't plan around a status that is days old.
- Looking for a story that isn't in the sprint. The scrum board only shows work in the active sprint. If a story is missing, check the backlog. It probably hasn't been added to the sprint yet.
- Reading story points as hours. Story points compare how big pieces of work are against each other. A 3 is not 3 hours. It means bigger than a 1 or 2 and smaller than a 5.
- Dragging a card to Done before it is really finished. Only move a card to Done when the work is reviewed and meets what the team agreed counts as done. Otherwise unfinished work looks complete when the sprint closes.
When a business analyst uses this
Before stand-up, a business analyst checks the In Review column for stories waiting on them to confirm the acceptance criteria. They note each story's key, like SCRUM-9, in the requirements log, so every requirement links to the exact card the team is building.
Questions people ask
What is the difference between the backlog and the scrum board in Jira?
The backlog holds all the work that is waiting to be planned. The scrum board only shows the work in the current sprint, laid out in status columns.
What happens to unfinished issues when you complete a sprint in Jira?
When the team clicks Complete sprint, anything not done goes back to the backlog or into the next sprint, so no work is lost.
How do you change an issue's status on a Jira board?
Drag the card to another column, for example from To Do to In Progress. Jira saves the new status at once, and the whole team sees it.
