Getting your team to do the work can be daunting enough! To make sure that Jira supports that process correctly, you must know the basic of how to manage the sprint in Jira, so you can track the work and follow the cadence, from sprint start to sprint end. If you aren’t sure in how to follow through in any of the steps, the below guide is just what you need!
In this article we will provide a deep technical dive on how to manage jira sprints, on the cloud version of Jira, for company managed projects. While there are similarities to team based projects, and also to Jira’s data center version, there are differences that aren’t accounted for in this guide.
Let’s start by understanding what a sprint is
A sprint is a time-boxed period in which specific work is completed and made ready for review. Sprints are commonly used in agile software development methodologies as a way to plan and organize work. It is important to manage jira sprints correctly because they help to ensure that work is completed efficiently and effectively. By setting clear goals and priorities for each sprint, teams can focus their efforts and make steady progress towards the completion of larger projects. Additionally, managing jira sprints correctly allows teams to identify and address any issues or roadblocks that may arise, ensuring that work is completed on time and to the desired level of quality.
Effective jira sprint management is crucial for the success of agile software development projects. The process of starting a sprint in Jira involves setting clear goals and priorities, as well as establishing a timeline for completing the work. During the sprint, it is important to regularly review and adjust the work plan as needed to ensure that the team stays on track and is making progress towards the sprint goals. When the sprint is complete, it is important to properly close it out in Jira by reviewing the work that was completed and identifying any lessons learned that can be applied to future sprints. By carefully managing the start, execution, and closure of each jira sprint, teams can ensure that work is completed efficiently and effectively, leading to better overall project outcomes.
In Jira, sprints are contained within a board where the board serves one or more teams. If you are running a kanban board, it means the team is more focused on having a steady throughout, rather than completing a set amount of work on a dead line, and sprints wont be available for your team.
Jira’s Manage Sprint permission
To begin with, you wont be able to manage anything around sprints, unless you are granted with the manage sprints permission. This permission allows you to carry all actions related to a sprint, which are:
- creating a sprint
- starting a sprint
- editing a sprint
- closing a sprint
If your built a board that aggregates data from several projects you will need to have the manage sprint permission in all the jira projects that the board’s filter is using.
If you dont have the relevant permissions, you should reach out to your system admin.
how to create a sprint in jira?
Creating the sprint
To create a sprint in Jira, go to your team’s board. Firstly, you need to identify that the team is using a sprint based board under their jira project.
A sprint based board would have a backlog section and an active sprint section.
To create a sprint, go to the backlog section, which is where you set and start all your sprints.
Find the backlog section. The backlog contains all the items to be prioritized into the sprint. Just above it, there will be a ‘create sprint’ button. If its not enabled, you are missing the manage sprint permission.
Once you created the new sprint, it will appear right above, and next to, the backlog section.
Sprint parameters
When creating the sprint, Jira offers several options that you can set to define it:
- Sprint name
- Sprint goal
- Start date
- End date
The sprint name will be used as a naming convention moving forward.
The start and end dates are used as a set time period and when coming to set the next sprint, a similar period will be used.
how to start and edit a sprint
Even though Jira requires you to set a start and an end date for the sprint, to start and end a sprint, you must manually choose a sprint to start and manually to close it, when the time comes.
Once you have the sprint set, you must decide on some content that will go into the sprint, otherwise, you wont be able to start the sprint.
Secondly, if there is already an active sprint for your team, you wont be able to start a sprint, unless a specific setting is defined in your Jira system (consult with your system admin if needed)
Lastly, if you aren’t able to start the sprint, perhaps you are missing the manage sprint permission.
If you are able to start a sprint, you should be able to see something like this:
When editing a sprint, you are able to define one of its parameters (name, goal, sprint start date and sprint end date).
Editing a sprint is available from the backlog view.
Go to your team’s backlog panel from the left pane item. Find your sprint and click the 3 dots, then, choose the edit sprint option.
Based on the sprint parameters that you have defined, the sprint’s goal will appear on the active sprint board, as well as the remaining number of days (Jira calculates this value, based on the sprint’s planned end date)
how to close a sprint in Jira?
Closing a sprint in Jira is probably the trickiest part of them all. Closing a sprint in Jira depends not only on the manage sprint permission, but is also affected from:
- having single or multiple sprints
- Having all the jira issues and subtasks closed
- and to a lesser extant, on having the next sprint available
As opposed to creating, starting and editing a sprint, closing a jira sprint takes place from the active board panel.
If all goes well, you should see the button available here, after you choose the active sprint board
Help! I cant close the sprint!
If the ‘complete sprint’ button isnt available to you, it could be for one of these reasons:
- Your board collects data from several projects. In this case, your board shows you tickets that are coming from other projects, and while you have the permission to see these tickets, you may not necessarily have the permission to edit the sprints of those issues . Having permissions to manage sprints in your projects, doesn’t automatically mean that you also have permissions to edit other sprints in Jira.
- Parallel Sprints. If your Jira site allows for multiple sprints, it means the board is reflecting several active sprints your team is working on. You must first choose the active sprint you want to close, and then mark it as completed.
- Closed/Done items with open subtasks. This is one of the more common issues when attempting to close a Jira sprint. While using tasks or stories with subtasks, its some times easy to forget to mark the subtasks as done, as the story/task are the bigger milestone that needs completion.
In this state, Jira will notify you and you need to choose what to do. You can choose either to reopen the completed stories and tasks, or close the open sub tasks. Once you have made the change, you can attempt to close the sprint in your Jira.
Closing a sprint with open issues
When closing the sprint, if there are still open issues, Jira will ask you what it should – to move the open issues from the sprint to the next sprint in your Jira board, or to the backlog.
Important! If there are work items on your board that are assigned to another team’s sprint, you must close that sprint on the other team’s board. Otherwise, the default behavior is sending the open items to the backlog and you’ll need to manually update the items into the relevant sprint.
Sprint Report
When the sprint is completed, the sprint and its planned content will disappear from the backlog panel. The information then becomes available under the sprint report, where you can access sprints that were completed in the past, as well as their data – which issues were planned, completed, and moved to the next sprint.
The sprint report is available under the reports section of your board. Make sure you are viewing the relevant sprint when analyzing the data.
Can I reopen a sprint in Jira?
Yes, and…
In the sprint report, you can choose to reopen a sprint, but this action should be done with caution!
Reopening a sprint means it becomes active again. Note that his can interfere with a sprint that is already running. If you already have an active sprint and parallel sprints aren’t configured, you wont be able to reopen the sprint.
Another point to consider is that when you reopen a sprint, jira reassigns it with all the issues that were moved from it. This happens since Jira expect the sprint to become the active sprint.
What happens if a sprint is deleted?
unless you have a very good reason for it, don’t delete sprints! In jira cloud, deleted items are not recoverable. make sure to not delete sprint. Consider your permission scheme to make sure that only the relevant people have access to that option.
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