How to Create a Scrum Board in Jira

Before building one, it helps to look at an established example. A space like "PMN Online's Scrum" shows the pattern clearly: an active sprint at the top (Release 1.0 Sprint 2, dated 27 Jun – 25 Jul) listing its six work items with statuses like To Do, In Progress, and In Review, and a separate Backlog section below holding items not yet pulled into a sprint. This is the structure a Scrum board is built to support — a defined sprint window sitting above an unscheduled backlog.

From the left sidebar under Spaces, open the space you're setting the board up in — for example, a space called TEST SPACE. Inside it you'll find its existing boards listed underneath, such as a "TS board." Rather than creating a board from a blank slate, you typically create it alongside a space's existing backlog and board list.

From within the space's backlog view, use the add action (the + control near the board list) to open the "Create a board" dialog. It's a short form: a required Name this board field, and a required "Choose what to include in this board" dropdown that determines which work items the new board will actually pull in.

Give the board a name your team will recognize at a glance — something tied to the sprint cadence or the team itself rather than something generic. Then use the include dropdown to scope the board to the right set of work items; getting this wrong is the most common reason a freshly created board looks empty or shows unrelated issues, so double-check the selection before clicking Create.

Click Create, and the new board should appear in the space's board list in the sidebar alongside any others. Open it once to confirm it's showing the work items you expected — if it's empty, the include setting from the previous step is the first thing to revisit rather than assuming something broke.

A Scrum board is only useful once its backlog has real work items in it. Add the issues your team plans to tackle, prioritize them by dragging them into order, and make sure each has enough detail — a clear title and any relevant labels or story points — that whoever picks it up during the sprint doesn't need to ask what it means.

With the backlog populated, select the items for your first sprint and start it, the same way the sprint at the top of the PMN Online's Scrum example is dated and scoped to six work items. Once started, those items move onto the active board where the team drags them across statuses as work progresses, giving everyone a live view of where the sprint stands.