Ending a Sprint

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(info) This page only applies to Scrum boards. If you are using a Kanban board, please see Releasing a Version (Kanban).

On the final day of the sprint the team will complete the sprint — this will usually occur immediately prior to the sprint demo and retrospective. Any issues not completed at the end of the sprint will be moved to the next planned sprint, as they did not meet the team's definition of "Done". If you do not have a next planned sprint, they will be returned to the backlog.

To end the active sprint:

  1. Click the Agile link's down-arrow in the top navigation bar, then select your preferred board from the resulting dropdown menu.
  2. Click Active sprints.
  3. Click the dropdown next to the sprint name to display a dialog box (see Screenshot 1 below).
  4. If you wish, edit the Sprint Name, Start Date or End Date.
  5. Click the Complete Sprint button.

Why can't I complete a Sprint?
  • You don't have the right permissions: You must have the JIRA 'Project Administrator' permission for all project(s) with issues included in the sprint to complete it. If you cannot complete a sprint, check whether your sprint has issues from a project where you are not a project administrator (see this article if you need help).
  • One or more of the completed issues in the sprint have sub-tasks that are not complete: You must complete the sub-tasks for all completed issues before you can end the sprint. Note, completing a sub-task means that it is in a status that has been mapped to the rightmost column of your board (see Configuring Columns).

What should I do upon ending a Sprint?

Typically, at the end of a Sprint, you conduct a retrospective of the Sprint. When you complete a Sprint in JIRA Agile, you will be shown the Sprint ReportIf you have Confluence linked to your JIRA instance, you can create your retrospective notes as Confluence pages and link them to your Sprint Report.

Other actions that occur at the end of a Sprint:

  • Your issues will move out of the Active sprints
  • Any issues not completed at the end of the sprint will be moved to the next planned sprint, as they did not meet the team's definition of "Done". If you do not have a next planned sprint, they will be returned to the backlog and will be visible in the Backlog of the board.
    • If you have parent issues that are not 'Done' but have sub-tasks that are all 'Done', the parent issues will still be moved to the next sprint/backlog. If these parent issues are part of another active sprint, the previously completed sub-tasks will still be 'Done'.  
  • Because Scrum teams usually track completed issues by version rather than by sprint, your issues will not be marked with the date the sprint was closed.
  • Once a sprint is closed, you cannot re-open it. If you need to view the contents of the sprint again, you can select that sprint in the Sprint Report
    (tick) Tip: You can find issues belonging to all closed sprints by using the closedSprints() function. For details, please see the JIRA JQL documentation.

Screenshot: Completing a Sprint

tip/resting Created with Sketch.

You can release the sprint as a version if you wish

Many Scrum teams don't release a version at the end of a sprint, but if you need to, it's easy to do. In the Completed Issues section of the Sprint Report, just click View in Issue Navigator. You can then use JIRA's Bulk Edit to assign all of the issues to the relevant version (for details, please see the JIRA documentation on

). Note that you will not be able to do this if your "Done" column sets an issue's status to "Closed", as issues are not editable once they are "Closed" (but "Resolved" is fine). Also note you can only Bulk Edit the "Fix Version" for issues from one project at a time.

 

 

 

Last modified on Feb 24, 2015

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