This has been floating around for many years by the look of it but I can't find an open version of it, so here I go!

Use case:

Our team is (attempting to be) Agile and hence we allow all team members to create issues and assign to whomever they think is appropriate (team members are supposed to be trusted and processes should allow quick reaction to change rather than hierarchies of assignment). Also, inspection of our database reveals that the assignee and reporter are the same for 84% of our issues, i.e. 84% of the time it is better to automatically assign to the reporter than require them to manually assign to themselves. Clearly, the process that will best suit us is to have the reporter as the default assignee and allow users to assign to someone else if need be (which will be the minority of the time).

Current workarounds:

1) There is an "assign to me" button which is obviously pretty quick to press. However, the fact that the apparent solution also seems very straightforward means that this is something people find very frustrating. Additionally, it is open to people forgetting (we trust our team members but also accept that they make mistakes).

2) A post function can be added to always assign to the current user. This is not great because it bulldozes over any actual selection the user makes (which will be very irritating 16% of the time for us) and is also not very visible/intuitive even when you do want it to happen (you have to leave the assignee field blank knowing that it is about to be assigned).

Proposal:

Add the option to make the reporter/current user the default assignee in a project.

Justification:

This is a completely null change to anyone not making use of it, the only people who would even notice it would be project admins/leads, who would only be exposed to an extra option in a drop down if they decided to configure the default assignee (which they would probably only be doing if they want this feature!). Whereas people like myself will benefit 84% of the time that we are creating a JIRA issue.