Does JIRA provide a way for the Product Owner to approve a Sprint before it is started?

[Michael Partyka]

Hi Jeff,

not in a straight way but you can achieve this same thanks to the configuration.

Check condition when sprint is disabled:

 Why is Start Sprint disabled?

You will not be permitted to start a sprint, unless all of following conditions are met:

• 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) included in the board. This means that if your board includes issues from multiple projects, you need to have the 'Administer Projects' permission in each of those projects.
• Ranking must be enabled on the board.
• Only the planned sprint at the top of the backlog can be started. If you want to start a sprint that is lower in the list, you'll need to Reorder the sprint to move it to the top of the backlog. (This doesn't apply when Parallel Sprints are enabled)

[Jeff Goldring]

Not exactly what I was looking for.  Our auditors would like to see that the Product Owner has reviewed and approved a Sprint.  They'd like to see this signoff for the Sprint in JIRA. there are other ways to do it (Create a screen print of the sprint and have the PO signoff via email - but then need to figure out where to add that in JIRA).  Would ultimately like a "Sprint Signoff" as a whole "Product" if possible that is held in JIRA.

[Steven F Behnke]

I only see this possible if you're interested in a little custom development or manual process. No add-on currently exists to facilitate this.

The Sprint API was recently exposed to us so you can use the API to set the state to Active or Closed programmatically. A simple script, service, listener, or post-function could achieve this from a JIRA Workflow allowing you to build an auditable process within a JIRA issue.

This API documentation is listed here – https://docs.atlassian.com/jira-software/REST/cloud/#agile/1.0/sprint-updateSprint

[Steven F Behnke]

Oh, and if you're on Server and have Adaptavist ScriptRunner, you could use the new web-item's modules to customize the UI and add approval functions.