How can I use automation in Jira Cloud to finish and start sprints across all projects?

[Alex Hadden-Boyd]

I want to use automation to finish sprints at 11:59 pm every two weeks and start new sprints across all the projects in my Jira Cloud instance.

[Bill Sheboy]

Hi @Alex Hadden-Boyd 

You can probably do that with scripting add-ons and scheduled jobs, but you may not want to do so.

Teams using scrum plan a sprint, and delivery work begins at the end of planning.  Jira supports that by allowing you to start the sprint (in the tool) *after planning has completed*.  If you were to automatically start a sprint at a fixed day/time and the team wasn't done with planning, and changes to the sprint backlog would appear as scope changes for the sprint.  And, if a team finished planning but needed to wait until midnight for the sprint to start, they would need to keep track of workflow outside of Jira for a few hours.

At the other end of a sprint, scrum teams normally complete with a retrospective.  For Jira, the out-of-the-box tool has no concept of retro.  So you would need to end the sprint (in Jira) prior to the retro so you can bring any supporting data in for consideration of improvements.  Waiting until midnight would take away Jira provided information to support retrospectives.

Best regards,

Bill

[Alex Hadden-Boyd]

@[deleted] you have many valid points, but unfortunately, I sill need to be able to start a Sprint on a given schedule.  I'm converting several hundred Rally users to Jira.  These users are used to new Sprints being automatically started for them.  They typically hold the Retros after the start of the new Sprint.  I could say they need to finish the Sprint themselves, but I need to be able to start the next one automatically.  If I'm not mistaken, we can have two Sprints open at the same time.

[Bill Sheboy]

Thanks, Alex.  In that case, I would search for the different methods people have used to use scripting add-ons to accomplish this task.  I have not tried to implement these myself.

There are two open suggestions for adding this functionality to Jira, which you can review and vote for here:

https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JSWSERVER-11569

https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRACLOUD-72857

[Jerry Laster _Divim_ Inc__]

Hi,

We just released Sprint automation for Jira to finish and start sprints in every selected board and automatically. Please check it out at https://marketplace.atlassian.com/1225720.

Try it free for one month, and please give us feedback about features, functionality, and pricing. 

Happy to support the community!

Jerry