Using Plan Mode

Plan mode is where you plan your sprints. When a sprint is ready to begin, it moves out of Plan mode into Work mode.

Plan mode is mostly used by Scrum teams — Kanban teams will generally only use Work mode.

To access a board in Plan mode:

1. Log in to JIRA.

2. Click the Agile link's down-arrow in the top navigation bar, then select your preferred board from the resulting dropdown menu.

3. Your board will be displayed.
4. Click 'Plan'.

Screenshot 1: the board in 'Plan' mode (click to enlarge)

In Plan mode you can:

• Prioritise the Backlog — Create issues for your backlog, rank and estimate them, and pull the marker (the grey 'Sprint' box) down to grab a set of issues you'd like to tackle for your first iteration.
• Estimate Stories — You can use the 'J' and 'K' keys to move through issues in the backlog and get details on the right-hand side of the screen. Plug in your estimates or story points as you go.
  Plan, and Plan Again — When you're happy with the stories for the iteration, click the 'Start Sprint' button and the stories will move into Work mode. While a sprint is in Work mode, you can still plan a subsequent iteration in Plan mode, but you won't be able to start it until the active iteration is completed. Note that you can only start (or complete) a sprint if you have 'Project Administrator' permission for all issues in the sprint.

Note that Plan mode is only available if the board was created using the Scrum preset — see Creating a Rapid Board.