A create issue button at the bottom or kanban columns would greatly improve user experience for all users and ramp up time for new users.

• If the column only shows one status then you can automatically prefill the status, saving the user a step.
• This is standard UX users are used to from Trello and most kanban implementations. 
  • At best it is unintuitive to have to go to the top of the screen to the "Create".  
  • Worse is being required to navigate to backlog or issues screen that requires extra hoops for a user's brain to jump through and reacquaint themselves to a new display.

I believe this is a significant hurdle when a new user goes to use the kanban board. Here's an example of a user struggling in this scenario.