Documentation for GreenHopper 6.2.x. Documentation for earlier versions of GreenHopper is [available too].

Once you have chosen which issues are to be included in your next sprint, you are ready to start the sprint.

(info) This page only applies to Scrum boards.

Please note, you must have the Edit Issues permission for a project to start a sprint in that project.

To start a Sprint:

  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.
  5. Make sure the sprint footer (the grey horizontal marker) is positioned below the issues you want to include in your upcoming sprint. Drag it up or down, or drag issues up from the backlog, as needed.
  6. Click Start Sprint.
    (warning) Disabled 'Start Sprint' link? 
    • You can only start a sprint if there is no active sprint. While a sprint is active in Work mode, you can still plan subsequent sprints in Plan mode, but you won't be able to start one until the active sprint is completed. (You can, however, drag and drop an issue in Plan mode onto the active sprint.)
    • You will need to have the JIRA 'Administer Projects' permission in the project(s) whose issues are to be included in the new sprint.
    • You will need to have enabled ranking on your board.
    (info) If you do not have an estimation statistic applied to an issue, you will receive a warning when starting the sprint (unless you are using Issue Count, as this is calculated automatically).
  7. You will be prompted to enter a sprint name and to select the Start Date and End Date for the sprint.

You will be taken to Work mode, where your newly started sprint will now be shown.

Related pages:

Screenshot: a board in 'Plan' mode — starting a sprint (click to enlarge)


 

 

 

70 Comments

  1. Fabio Moggi

    Is it possible to run two sprint at the same time?

    1. Anonymous

      I'm interested in this too.

      In addition, how do you plan more than one sprint?

      1. Fabio Moggi

        The only workaround I found to support planning multiple sprints is in the Planning Board. You can add versions as if it were your sprint. I don't get a significant difference between Planning Board and scrum-enabled Rapid Board.

    2. Mike Robbins

      I'm interested to know why you would have 2 sprints running simultaneously - are they for two different projects or for the same project?

      1. Fabio Moggi

        Hi Mike - the intent is to run two different development teams within the same JIRA project.

        1. Mike Robbins

          I believe you can create 3 total rapid boards:

          1 for Team A to do their Plan/Work/Report

          1 for Team B to to their Plan/Work/Report

          1 for the Scrum Master to organize both teams in one place

          I could be wrong, but I think I've seen this in the videos on the Greenhopper help page.

    3. Anonymous

      You should create separate "Rapid board" for each project, after than it's available create different sprint in each board

    4. Viktor Egorov

      You should create separate "Rapid board" for each project, after than it's available create different sprint in each board

  2. Edwin Stol

    I would not advise to use versions for sprints in the Rapid Board.

    I would suggest looking into milestones: you can create these in your product with a title like 'SPRINT 6' or 'SPRINT 7', and plan these issues in your sprint backlog.

    That way, you have more flexible 'sprint backlogs' + you do not have the added complexity of the version field.

     

    Aside from this;
    It would rock if i were able to use sprints in my JQL field, and then not like 'sprint = 2' but, more like 'sprint = "2012 Sprint 002 - Team Purple" e.g not only the sprintnumber, but the sprintname. 

     

  3. Fabio Moggi

    Thanks for the advice Edwin. Is there any documentation out there that outlines how to setup milestone the way you described?

    1. Edwin Stol

      I don't think that there is any documentation on this, because it is not 'supported' afaik.

      Anyway, here is a screenshot of what i mean; only thing i still need in this is Atlassian creating the possibility to adjust the colours of the different issue types (already on the way, afaik).

      You can then make the milestone 'jump out'  (bright yellow or so). For now, we 'solve' this by using special characters (as you can see in the screenshot.

      The issuetype 'Milestone' is incorporated in the GreenHopper Scrum Issue Type Scheme, so you might want to look into that. 

  4. Anonymous

    How do you use Rapid board if you have created already a Sprint using Planning board?

    Or they use totally different issue fields to mark them belonging to the Sprint?

  5. Edwin Stol

    Yeah, Rapid Board uses the 'sprint 'field, planning board uses the 'fixversion' field.
    I do wonder why you would start two seperate sprints with the same issues though.

     

  6. Viktor Egorov

    I have several products, for each product i have create different project. I'd like to have separate backlog and sprint for each product. Can i do it with Green Hopper?

    1. Rosie Jameson [Atlassian]

      Please see comment

       

    2. Tim Baker

      I'm having a similar problem, trying to use the new rapid boards for several teams working on the same product.  Perhaps someone can suggest something that I can do differently to make this work.  Here's where I'm at so far:

      • I've created two different rapid boards.
      • In the first board, I planned and started a sprint.  No problem here.
      • In the second board, the "Start Sprint" button is grayed out.  At the top of the board, I see the sprint that was started on the other rapid board.
      • The filters were created in such a way that there are some issues that may appear in both boards, and this is intentional.  I can understand issues that are committed to a sprint on one board no longer appearing on a second board, but I don't understand why I can't start a new sprint on the second board at all.

      If anyone can point me in the direction of the correct documentation, or provide an explanation, so I know what to do differently, that would be very helpful.  Thanks.

       

      1. Dan Burzynski

        Annoyingly, although you can have multiple rapid boards for a project, they still can only have just one 'sprint' on the go at any one time. This is a major show stopper for us as we have one project for all our development work and multiple sprint teams (4 of them) that all need their own individual sprints. We can do this in the 'classic' mode by having 'Sprint 1' which then has 4 child sprints. It's a real disappointment that this functionality has been killed off with Greenhopper's new way of doing things. We can still use the 'Classic' version, but I worry for how much longer. I suspect that over time the Classic version will be phased out (or at the very least, new developments on it will be curtailed) and then we'll have to look for another product to use.

        Dear Atlassian, if you're listening, please can we have the ability to have sprints per rapid board? It's a feature that we can't use GreenHopper without. (I really don't want to have to make multiple projects just to solve this problem as it'll introduce a lot of problems elsewhere in the way in which we work) (sad)

        1. Dan Burzynski

          I've just been nosing around the GreenHopper project in JIRA and found this:  GHS-5542 - Getting issue details... STATUS

          How do we go about pushing this to the top of the required feature list?

          1. Wesley Monroe

            I up voted:

            GHS-5410 - Getting issue details... STATUS

            Which is listed as a critical issue.  This is imperative for my organization as well.

        2. Tim Baker

          Thank you for the confirmation that there can be only one sprint per project, Dan.  Interestingly, I'm in the same situation that you are.  I have 4 teams working on a single JIRA project, so I'd like 4 different (simultaneous) sprints to manage that work.  It appears that I'll have to work with each team to move issues into the sprint that's being planned, and not start the sprint until after that sprint planning has occurred all 4 times.  That's unfortunate, because our sprints historically don't always have the same schedule, which makes this challenging.

          How does GreenHopper determine whether two Rapid Boards are for the same "project?"  If I carefully construct my JQL such that two Rapid Boards contain backlogs of tickets that are unique to each Rapid Board (but are in the same JIRA project), will that be sufficient?  In other words, is my problem that I'm trying to manage two Rapid Boards that both contain a certain JIRA project name within the JQL, or that there's an intersection of issues that are contained within both Rapid Boards?

          Thanks for any light you can shed on this.

        3. murali krishna

          Hi,

          You can run two sprint parallel for a project.

          Edit filter in boards.

          for example:

          1. Create a filter for Team A which will display issues raised by this team.
          2. Create another filter for Team B which display issues raised by this team.
          3. Go back to board1 and configure it and edit its filter with filter created in step1
          4. Go to board2 and edit its filter with filter created in step2.
          5. Now you should be able to create sprints and run them.

          Idea is that you should not have issues from team A displayed in Team B's board and vise-versa.

      2. Tim Baker

        I know this doesn't solve everyone's problems, but I thought I would post this here, as it provides useful information in understanding what the Rapid Board is doing behind the scenes.  I'll need to implement some workarounds to use the Rapid Board with my development processes, but at least now I know what to expect and where to start.

        https://answers.atlassian.com/questions/45095/start-multiple-sprints-simultaneously?page=1#45355

         

        1. Anonymous

          Dan, Wesley,Tim

          We would like this functionality too. We have mutilple development teams working on different feature sets at the same time. Some are in-house developers and some are contracted teams.

          I will be folowing GHS-5542  and GHS-5410.

          thank you for creating this issues.

          Logan

  7. Anonymous

    I'm playing with the new sprint board and just got an error message.

    I created a sprint and added tickets to the sprint.   moved the tickets through the process and released the sprint.

    I went back to start a new sprint and I'm getting the error,

    "You do not have permission to edit issues in this project."  repeated many times, might be as many as the number of tickets in my quick filter

    Any idea what might be going on?

     

    Thanks

    1. Rosie Jameson [Atlassian]

      Can you please double-check your JIRA project permissions?

      If the problem persists, please contact Support.

       

      1. Anonymous

        I'm having the same issue, any way to resolve this?

        1. Anonymous

          (Same Anonymous)

          I fixed the issue, it was a problem with a ticket type accidentally being added to the sprint which did not have remaining and time estimate values enabled.  I removed it from the sprint backlog and it worked great.  May want to have a better check case in this via code and properly display the error.

  8. Anonymous

    Also, I don't think it is permissions as I am Admin 

  9. Fabian Gautschi

    Hi everyone!

    I want to set a filter that filters for issues which are in a particular sprint. For that purpose I need the sprint ID of a particular sprint. How can I find out the sprint ID of a particular sprint?

    Thanks for your help!!

  10. Edwin Stol

    You can view the number in a few places, the 'report'mode is one example:

    http://<JIRA-URL>/secure/RapidBoard.jspa?rapidView=121&view=reporting&chart=sprintRetrospective&sprint=22

    1. Anonymous

      Thank you for your answer!

       

    2. Fabian Gautschi

      And is there another way to find it out (settings, admin area etc) ?

  11. Anonymous

    Is it possible to make it such that the position of the sprint marker will show up for all project members/users? As product owner who has many stories spread across a team of 5 developers, the way I want to plan for a sprint is as follows:

    • order the stories/issues I want to tackle in the next sprint at the top of the backlog
    • position the sprint marker below the the N stories/issues atop the backlog that I want and expect to tackle in the next sprint
    • have the developers then be able to see what I see, so that they can look at the backlog, filter on their name and see their stories that are above the sprint marker, such that they can input or validate point estimates
    • then, once estimates are validated, we collectively lock on the plan before i start the sprint

    Currently, it appears that nobody else can see where I've set the sprint marker.  Which makes it such that I need to "manually" create sprint markers (as issues), one for each developer, and line them up under those N stories/issues. 

    Thanks

    1. Rosie Jameson [Atlassian]

      Hi, persistent Sprint Markers have been added to the latest cut of GreenHopper, which is due for release within the next week.

       

  12. John Price

    I'm playing with the Rapid Board to see if we can upgrade from a prior version of GH.  I'm confused about the sprint planning feature with Rapid Board.  In the old version (Planning Board) I created multiple sprints ahead of time  (like 2012.8.1, 2012.8.2)  That allowed me to tenatively put items into the next sprint as a way of rough planning.  Of course we still used a planning meeting to determine the final content.

    But it appears now that there's no way to do any setup ahead of time.  Also, I have a bunch of old sprints (using fix version) that I want to migrate to the new rapid board/sprint field format.  Ideally I just create a new historical sprint like 2012.3.1, and move the items from fix version 2012.3.1 into it in bulk.  Am I thinking about this wrong?

     

    1. Anonymous

      No, you're thinking about it correctly.  It's Atlassian that's thinking about it wrong.  Look above at all the hacks and workarounds to get something obvious to work.  It is always this way.  Who would ever want two sprints going at once in the same project?  Who would ever want to plan multiple sprints in advance?

       

      1. Rosie Jameson [Atlassian]

        As of GreenHopper 6.0 you can now create and plan multiple sprints in advance. Thank you for your patience on this.

         

        1. Anonymous

          Being able to plan multiple sprints in advance is a great improvement.  Now you just need to make it so there can be multiple sprints at once!  Again, it should be obvious that companies can have different teams working on the same product.  I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that's the rule, not the exception.  From there, it seems obvious one would want to manage a sprints by team.

           

        2. Admin(TDS)

          Should have the ability to change the Upcoming Sprint label. (just like we can change the label of the current active sprint) This is very important as then we can use the rapid board and give a view of future timelines to the stakeholders/sponsors/the guys with the money who pays for the project. (smile)

          Also I fully agree that we should be able to have multiple sprints at once. For large projects with different teams with different skill sets (i.e. development, infrastructure etc) this is a must as most of the time these activities are performed in parallel and having separate projects or rapid boards is messy to manage and also defeats the purpose of a single view of a project. Hope Atlassian will get this in soon. 

          Also when you do the multiple active sprints at once feature, don't forget to add a dropdown to select the sprint in the Rapid Board ->Work screen.

          1. Edwin Stol

            You can rename the upcoming sprints in version 6.0.2, your other comments are fixed within the next iteration (or so it seems).

            1. Anonymous

              That is good news. I have 6.0.1. Installed it only a few days back. So things are moving fast. Let me install the newer version tonight and see how it goes. Thank Edwin.

  13. Anonymous

    Quick question on planning multiple sprints in advance. It looks as though individual issues do not receive the appropriate Sprint value until the Sprint is "Started." This makes it confusing when you're looking at an issue that has been slated for an upcoming sprint, since there is no way to tell this. Any workaround here? 

     

    P.S. takes me about 7 tries to submit comments given incredibly obscure CAPTCHA. And I am not a bot. 

  14. Anonymous

    I have a question on JIRA with GreenHopper.

    If i make a Sprint with inside issues from 3 different assigned user, how can i do to put in the estimated time not the sum of all of the issues, but the sum of the time that i could have if the user work in parallel???

    example:

    Iss_A   user1   10h

    Iss_B   user2   5h

    Iss_C   user1   4h

    Iss_D   user2   7h

    the total time is 26h, but i want that user work in parallel, so i could have total time 12h (user2)

    1. Anonymous

      Oh, sorry...

      total time 14h (user1)....

       

  15. Paul Wisner

    Some else started my sprint before we completed planning.   I still need to enter Estimates.   Can anyone suggest a remedy?  Can I "unstart" the sprint? 

  16. grant luna

    Just upgraded to GH 6.0.6 and enabled the "mulitiple active sprints" options in the GH labs configuration. I now have mulitple sprints active on my scrum board. Thanks Atlassian? This is a great product!!!

  17. Anonymous

    Hi there,

    I just started a sprint in GreenHopper version 6.0.7 on a local install. I just tried to start a sprint, but it only put half of my issues into the active sprint, creating a new (not active sprint) with the same name and the rest of the issues.

    What is happening?

    Regards,

    Jan

    1. Rosie Jameson [Atlassian]

      HI Jan, can you please contact http://support.atlassian.com ? Many thanks, Rosie

  18. Dean Brunne

    Hi - I have a project that is 3 sprints in already and I want to re-create my historical sprints. Greenhopper will not let me enter in Sprint Start and End Dates that are in the past.   Is there a way to work around this? Thanks!  Dean

     

  19. Anonymous

    Hi Dean

    Had the exact same issue.  The way around this is to start the sprint using valid dates and then amend these afterwards to dates in the past by clicking on the start and end dates below the sprint name.

    1. Anonymous

      Great! Thanks the dates work.  However were you able to recreate your burndown chart as it looks like I cannot recreate each days progress.  It is not a big deal if I can't but was hoping it can.

  20. Anonymous

    Hi - 

    Is there a way to update a story's Story Point Estimate after the Sprint starts?  Currently, it seems that we have to pull the story out of the sprint, update the estimate, and then put the story back in.

    In case you're wondering, we sometimes mistakenly put the wrong estimate on a story and catch the error the day after the sprint starts.

    1. Rosie Jameson [Atlassian]

      Please see the discussion on Estimation for background on this: Estimating an Issue

  21. Nimitt Desai

    If I create a Sprint in JIRA, how do I make GreenHopper recognize that? At seems to me that JIRA and Greenhopper do not recognize each other's sprints?

    1. Rosie Jameson [Atlassian]

      Correct, GreenHopper sprints are actually not related to JIRA versions.

      1. Nimitt Desai

        So Do I have to maintain JIRA versions and GH sprints separately? That seems duplication of work.

        1. Rosie Jameson [Atlassian]

          We are currently looking at possible options for this. You may like to watch/vote/comment on GHS-6588 - Getting issue details... STATUS

  22. Dave Pierce

    We have a project configured so that only the reporter can see/edit their own tasks - basically a personal task management project. We want each individual to be able to create their own sprints for the tasks for the week/fortnight.

    I cannot seem to be able to get the permissions right to allow a user to create a sprint. The users are the Project Administers, but the Create Sprint button is still greyed out. There are no active sprints. Are there any other permissions required in order to enable a sprint to be created?

    1. Rosie Jameson [Atlassian]

      If they have been given Project Admin permission in all projects displayed on your board, then they should be able to create sprints. Can you please contact http://support.atlassian.com? Many thanks.

      1. Dave Pierce

        The update to the documentation by Matthew has done the trick. I had to add ranking to the board to be able to create the sprint.

  23. Anonymous

    How do we plan multiple Sprints in Rapid Board? So if we have sprint dates and timeline established, how do we capture that for all sprints in Rapid board so there is general visibility into this timeline. The current functionality only allows to capture dates for one sprint at a time, which takes away the visibility of the complete plan.

    1. Rosie Jameson [Atlassian]

      You may like to watch/vote/comment on GHS-6649 - Getting issue details... STATUS

  24. FredC

    1) How do you create a filter for something that is grouped in a future sprint but the sprint isn't started? I have a 'sprint 4', or what will become sprint 4 when I click start sprint, but currently there isn't an active sprint.   Matching on sprint 4 fails to find any related issues.

    2) Why does the login for this site ask for "Username:" and "Password:" when it means "Email:" and "Password" ... between that and the obtuse captua's you have no idea what is incorrect.   I have to wonder how much feedback you miss because people just give up ...

     

    Thanks

    1. Rosie Jameson [Atlassian]

      The opensprints() function may be helpful

      1. Edwin Stol

        The opensprints() function does not give me (GH 6.0.3/JIRA 5.0.1) any results from future sprints; only sprints that are currently running/ have a number assigned.

      2. FredC

        Yes, thanks for the response.   I use opensprints() as the means to get the values, I should have been more clear on my initial description, my bad.   As stated by Edwin above, opensprints() only seems to work on sprints that are started.   Greenhopper gives us the ability to logically pre-group backlog items into upcoming sprints.   While very useful, having the ability to process those issues according to those groups seems like a basic requirement (otherwise the only utility is visual.)  I would also like to be able to get at the sprint name field.   I use this field to convey a "theme" or topic for the sprint that the team can identify with.   Again, being able to get at this field as part of the issues that are grouped in them via filters and reports etc is really important.

        1. Rosie Jameson [Atlassian]

          Sorry for misunderstanding. You may like to watch/vote/comment on:

          • GHS-6341 - Getting issue details... STATUS futureSprint()
          • GHS-6339 - Getting issue details... STATUS sprint name

  25. Steven Bush

    I'm having trouble starting our next sprint due to the restriction that there can only be one active sprint.  Here's the scenario:

    We have multiple projects, in this case "PPC" and "CMRE".  I have a board for "PPC Scrum" defined as any and CMRE has a board for "CMRE Scrum".  Our sprints are two weeks long and theirs are 1 month long.  Most recently, we had "Sprint 2013-11" finish up and we were ready to start "Sprint 2013-12".  However, CMRE started their scrum on June 1st and included one issue from the PPC project.  As a result, their sprint is now showing up on my board and because it is active, "start sprint" is disabled.  I'm not in a position to close their sprint, nor move their issue out of our project.  How can I start our next sprint and why is it that other board's Sprints affect our ability to start a sprint?

    1. Rosie Jameson [Atlassian]

      To run multiple active sprints, please enable the 'Parallel Sprints' feature in Labs.

  26. Aaron Carter

    Why aren't we allowed to see Subtasks of an Epic in the product backlog?  We we were able to see the subtasks in the Classic planning board but for some reason this feature doesn't work in the new Agile Scrum board.  Is there a way of getting around this so we can see the subtasks in the backlog and assing them to Sprints?



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