How to Create a Jira Scrum Project

Most teams don’t fail because they lack talent. They fail because their work is invisible.

No one knows what’s in progress. Deadlines slip quietly. Priorities shift without warning. And by the time someone notices, the sprint is already over and the goal is already missed.

That’s exactly what Jira Scrum is built to prevent.

Around 58–62% of companies rely on Atlassian Jira to manage Agile projects — and for good reason. When you set up a Jira Scrum project properly, your entire team moves in sync. Backlogs get prioritized. Sprints run on a rhythm. Progress is visible to everyone in real time.

This guide walks you through every step of creating a Jira Scrum project from scratch — from naming your project to running your first sprint — so you can stop guessing and start shipping.

What Is a Jira Scrum Project?

A Jira Scrum project is a workspace inside Jira that’s structured around the Scrum framework. It gives your team a dedicated board, a backlog, and the ability to plan and run time-boxed sprints.

Scrum breaks work into short, focused cycles — typically one to four weeks — called sprints. Each sprint has a clear goal, a defined set of tasks pulled from the backlog, and a fixed end date. At the end of every sprint, you review what you shipped, learn what can improve, and plan what comes next.

Scrum remains the most popular team-level Agile methodology, with 63% of Agile practitioners preferring it over all others — a position it has held consistently since 2006.

Jira makes running Scrum practical. Instead of juggling spreadsheets and sticky notes, every user story, bug, and task lives in one place. Your board updates automatically. Your sprint velocity is calculated for you. And your team always knows what to work on next.

Why Jira for Scrum? The Data Behind the Decision

Before you dive into the setup, it helps to understand why this combination works so well.

The global Agile project management tools market reached $9.2 billion in 2024, driven mainly by Scrum adoption. Enterprise Agile transformation services are projected to grow from $41.2 billion in 2024 to $96.3 billion by 2029. Teams aren’t adopting these tools for fun — they’re doing it because the results are measurable.

Here’s what the data says:

• 93% of Agile organizations report better customer satisfaction than non-Agile teams, according to McKinsey research. 73% also report better employee engagement and 93% better operational performance.
• A 2024 study found that organizations actively using Jira with Agile Scrum methodology saw a 25% increase in project completion rates.
• Agile teams doing full Scrum have 250% better quality than teams that do no estimating whatsoever.
• 81% of respondents would recommend Atlassian Jira Software based on their experience with Agile planning and delivery tools.
• 95% of professionals say Agile and Scrum are critical to their organization’s operational success, according to Forrester.
• 64% of teams say the most important reason for adopting Agile was to enhance their ability to manage changing priorities and accelerate software delivery.

If your team is still managing work through email threads, shared docs, or a loose collection of to-do lists, the gap between where you are and where you could be is significant. Let’s close it.

Prerequisites Before You Start

Before you create your Jira Scrum project, make sure you have the following in place:

A Jira account. You’ll need either a Jira Cloud or Jira Software account. Atlassian offers a free tier for teams of up to ten users, which is a good starting point.

Project admin permissions. You need to have the right permissions to create a project. If you’re not sure, check with whoever manages your Jira workspace.

A basic understanding of your work. You don’t need a fully fleshed-out backlog before you start. But having a rough sense of what your team will be working on — even just a list of five to ten tasks — will make the setup feel more concrete and less abstract.

A team to work with. Scrum is collaborative by design. Make sure at least a few people know they’ll be part of this project so they can be added as members.

How to Create a Jira Scrum Project: Step by Step

Log In and Navigate to Projects

Start by logging into your Jira account at atlassian.net. From the main navigation bar at the top of the screen, click on Projects. This will open a dropdown menu. Select Create project from the options.

You’ll land on a project template selection screen. This is one of the most important decisions you’ll make — and you can’t change it later.

Select the Scrum Template

On the template selection screen, you’ll see several options. Look for the Software Development category. Inside it, you’ll find the Scrum template.

Select it. Jira will give you a brief overview of what the Scrum template includes: a backlog, sprint planning capabilities, a Scrum board, and sprint reports. This is exactly what you need.

Click Select to confirm.

Choose Your Project Type: Team-Managed or Company-Managed

Jira will ask you whether you want a team-managed or company-managed project. Here’s the practical difference:

Team-managed projects are simpler to configure. Your team controls the settings directly. There’s no dependency on a Jira admin. This is ideal for smaller teams or teams just getting started with Scrum.

Company-managed projects offer more advanced configurations — custom workflows, permission schemes, and deeper integrations. These require admin access to configure and are better suited for larger organizations with established processes.

For most teams starting out, team-managed is the right call. You can always migrate to a more complex setup later.

Name Your Project and Set the Key

Give your project a clear, descriptive name. The name should reflect what the team is working on — for example, “Mobile App Redesign,” “Marketing Automation,” or “Customer Portal v2.”

Jira will auto-generate a project key based on your project name. This key is a short abbreviation (like “MAR” or “CPV”) that gets prepended to every issue number in the project. You can customize the key if the auto-generated one doesn’t feel right — just keep it short and recognizable.

Click Create when you’re ready. Jira will generate your project and take you directly to your new backlog.

Setting Up Your Backlog

The backlog is the heart of your Scrum project. It’s a prioritized list of everything your team might work on — features, bug fixes, improvements, research tasks, and anything else.

Create Your First Issues

From your new backlog view, you’ll see a prompt to create your first issue. Click Create issue and start adding tasks. In Jira, issues can be:

• Stories — user-facing features or functionality, often written from the perspective of the end user
• Tasks — internal work items that don’t map directly to a user feature
• Bugs — defects that need to be fixed
• Epics — large bodies of work that contain multiple stories or tasks

Don’t overthink this at the start. Add whatever comes to mind. You can refine, reorganize, and reprioritize later. The goal right now is to get your work into the system.

Write Effective User Stories

A user story follows a simple format: As a [type of user], I want [some goal] so that [some reason]. For example: “As a new customer, I want to reset my password in under two minutes so that I’m not locked out of my account.”

This format keeps the team focused on outcomes rather than outputs. It’s a small shift in language that makes a significant difference in how work gets prioritized and scoped.

Prioritize Your Backlog

Once you have a list of issues, drag and drop them to order by priority. The highest-priority items sit at the top. These will be the first candidates for your upcoming sprint.

54% of companies that adopt Agile frameworks report improved teamwork between teams, while 52% adopt Agile specifically to boost software quality. A well-prioritized backlog is the mechanism that makes both of those outcomes possible — it forces the team to agree on what matters most before work begins.

Creating and Running Your First Sprint

With your backlog populated and prioritized, you’re ready to create your first sprint.

Create a Sprint

At the top of your backlog, click Create sprint. A new sprint section will appear above your backlog. Jira names it “Sprint 1” by default — you can rename it to something more meaningful if your team prefers (e.g., “Sprint 1 – March Kick-off”).

Set Your Sprint Duration

Click on the sprint header and select Edit sprint. Here you can set:

• Sprint name
• Start date
• End date
• Sprint goal — a short statement summarizing what the team aims to achieve

Most teams use two-week sprints. In Scrum, a sprint is a fixed and agreed calendar window, typically lasting two weeks to a month, with its own agreed goals and targets. Start with two weeks. You can always adjust based on how your team operates.

Move Issues Into the Sprint

Drag issues from your backlog into the sprint section. Pull in only as much work as your team can realistically complete in the sprint. If you’re not sure how much that is, a good rule of thumb for a new team is to under-commit slightly on the first sprint — it’s better to complete everything and add more than to miss half your sprint goal.

Start the Sprint

When you’re ready, click Start sprint. Jira will ask you to confirm the start and end dates. Once confirmed, your sprint is live and your Scrum board becomes active.

Navigating Your Scrum Board

Once your sprint is running, your Scrum board becomes the daily command center for your team.

Board Columns

By default, Jira’s Scrum board includes three columns:

• To Do — issues that haven’t been started yet
• In Progress — issues currently being worked on
• Done — completed issues

You can add custom columns to match your team’s workflow. For example, many teams add a “In Review” or “Ready for Testing” column between In Progress and Done. To add a column, go to your project settings and navigate to the board configuration.

Updating Issues

Team members can drag and drop issues between columns as work progresses. Clicking on any issue opens a detail view where you can add comments, attach files, log time, and update the status.

Encourage your team to keep issues updated daily. The board is only useful if it reflects reality.

The Sprint Burndown Chart

Jira automatically generates a burndown chart for every sprint. This chart shows how much work remains over time versus how much work was originally planned. A healthy burndown slopes steadily downward toward zero by the end of the sprint.

If the line is flat or trending upward, it’s an early warning sign — either the sprint was over-committed, scope has crept in, or the team is blocked. Catching this mid-sprint gives you time to adapt.

Running the Core Scrum Ceremonies in Jira

Scrum has four core ceremonies. Jira doesn’t run these for you — that’s a human job — but it provides the data and structure to make each one productive.

Sprint Planning

This happens at the start of each sprint. The team reviews the top of the backlog, discusses scope, and pulls issues into the sprint. Jira’s backlog view makes this straightforward — you can see estimates, priorities, and epic context all in one place.

Daily Standup

Each day, the team answers three questions: What did I do yesterday? What will I do today? Is anything blocking me? The Scrum board is the visual anchor for this conversation. Everyone can see the current state of the sprint at a glance.

Sprint Review

At the end of the sprint, the team demos what they completed to stakeholders. Jira’s sprint report shows exactly which issues were completed, which were not, and any that were added mid-sprint. This becomes the basis for the review conversation.

Sprint Retrospective

This is where the team reflects on how the sprint went — not just what was shipped, but how the team worked together. Jira’s velocity chart shows sprint-over-sprint performance, which gives retrospectives real data to work with rather than relying on memory or gut feeling.

81% of Agile teams report using some version of Scrum, including Scrumban or a hybrid Scrum model. For most of them, regular retrospectives are what separate teams that improve from teams that plateau.

Key Jira Scrum Settings Worth Configuring

Once your project is running, a few settings will meaningfully improve the experience.

Estimation. Go to your project settings and enable story points as your estimation unit. This lets you assign point values to issues during sprint planning, which feeds your velocity chart over time.

Epics. Use epics to group related issues. This makes your backlog easier to scan and helps stakeholders see progress at a higher level. You can create epics from the backlog view by clicking “Epics” in the left sidebar.

Notifications. Configure which events trigger notifications for your team. Too many notifications create noise; too few mean things get missed. A good baseline is to notify assignees when issues are updated and to notify the whole team when sprint events happen.

Integrations. Jira connects natively with Confluence, Slack, GitHub, Bitbucket, and dozens of other tools. Linking your code repository means pull requests and commits can be referenced directly from Jira issues — keeping development and project management in sync.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Overloading the first sprint. New teams consistently overcommit. Start conservative and build confidence before increasing sprint capacity.

Skipping the sprint goal. A sprint without a goal is just a to-do list. The goal gives the sprint meaning and helps the team make decisions when unexpected work arrives.

Neglecting the backlog. The backlog becomes useless if it’s not maintained. Spend thirty minutes every week grooming it — adding new items, removing stale ones, re-estimating, and re-prioritizing.

Using too many issue types. Keep it simple. Stories, tasks, and bugs will cover 90% of what most teams need. Don’t create five custom issue types on day one.

Treating Jira as a reporting tool rather than a working tool. Jira is most powerful when the team actively uses it — not when managers pull reports from it while the team works elsewhere.

Conclusion

Setting up a Jira Scrum project isn’t complicated — but doing it well makes an enormous difference in how your team executes.

A well-structured Scrum project gives everyone clarity: what’s being worked on, what’s coming next, and whether the sprint is on track. It turns vague intentions into visible, trackable commitments.

95% of professionals report that Agile and Scrum are critical to their organization’s operational success. That’s not a coincidence — it’s the result of teams that built deliberate systems around how they work, then refined those systems sprint after sprint.

Start simple. Create the project, build the backlog, run the first sprint. The process teaches you more than any guide can. Once you’ve shipped your first sprint and run your first retrospective, you’ll know exactly what to adjust.

The foundation is now yours to build on.