How to find issues that were removed from a sprint?

[Dharmender Yadav]

Hi everyone,

I'm trying to identify issues that were removed from a sprint after the sprint started. From what I know, the Sprint field doesn't support historical operators like CHANGED, which makes this tricky.

So far, I’ve considered these approaches:

1. Brute force approach 

1. Get all issues not currently in the sprint
2. Loop through their change-logs to check if they were ever part of that sprint and then removed

2. Updated issues within sprint window

Use something like:

JQL : updated >= "2025-05-24" AND updated <= "2025-05-27"


And then inspect these issues to check if they had a sprint removal event

Does anyone know of a better or cleaner way to find issues that were removed from a specific sprint? Better if we can find a way via JQL or Jira REST API.

[Alexey Pavlenko _App Developer_]

Hi @Dharmender Yadav ,

I tried to solve this problem natively for quite some time previously - unfortunately, it's not possible to get this data consistently without writing custom logic and using JIRA API, or relying 3rd party apps.

If you are considering 3rd party apps, you can use the app I developed - Multi-team Metrics & Retrospective. It has many important features and coveres a lot of gaps, not just this one.

Look at the Removed Scope metric:

Best regards,
Alexey

[Natalia_Kovalchuk_SaaSJet_]

Hi @Dharmender Yadav !

Issue History for Jira app from my team may be able to help you with this. It tracks changes over time and can show when issues were added to or removed from a sprint, including after the sprint has begun. Also, it helps to see the issues where the sprint was changed.

Additionally, the app offers filtering and export options, which are useful for reviewing or examining changes in sprint scope during retrospectives.

I hope it can help you with your task of identifying issues that were removed from a sprint. 

[Thibault Guillaumat]

There is a way, and it does not need the changelog. Jira already computes exactly what you are asking for, for its own Sprint Report, and the endpoint behind that report is readable.

GET /rest/greenhopper/1.0/rapid/charts/sprintreport?rapidViewId=<boardId>&sprintId=<sprintId>

The response has a contents object with four lists: completedIssues, issuesNotCompletedInCurrentSprint, issuesCompletedInAnotherSprint, and puntedIssues. That last one is the issues removed from the sprint.

Each entry carries the issue key, the status, estimateStatistic (the story points) and sprintIds (which sprints the issue is in now). So you can answer "what left the sprint, how many points, and did it come back next sprint" in a single call, with no changelog crawling.

I tested this on a Cloud site: added an issue to an active sprint, removed it to the backlog, and it showed up in puntedIssues immediately, with no indexing delay. Around 400 ms per sprint, and the calls parallelise well if you need many sprints at once.

Two honest caveats.

It does not give you the removal date. The updatedAt field is the issue's last update, not the moment it left the sprint. If you need the date, you are back to the changelog.

And this is not a public API. /rest/greenhopper/1.0/ is internal and deprecated, with no documented replacement. It works today, but Atlassian is under no obligation to keep it. Fine for a report you run yourself, worth thinking about before you build something critical on it.

I wrapped this into a JQL function so it can be used as "issue in removedFromSprint(board)" in a normal filter. Happy to share it if that is useful to you. Disclosure: I am building it as a paid app, which is why I am saying so rather than pretending otherwise.

[Rahul_RVS]

Hi @Dharmender Yadav 

You can also use Jira Rest Api's to pull this information and build your own custom solution.

However if you need detailed reporting to track history changes for multiple issues, you may want to have a look at a mktplace app for the same.

We have built an app to extract changelog data in a simple and easy to use interface.

Issue History Reports

[Aron Gombas _Midori_]

Export all issues with their "repeating" change histories to Excel (sample):

Use the standard Excel filter feature to narrow down your sheet:

1. to given time period
2. to the "Sprint" field
3. to a non-empty old value
4. and an empty new value

This sheet was created with the Better Excel Exporter app.

(Discl. this paid and supported app is developed by our team. Free for 10 users!)

[Mohamed Benziane]

Hi,

This is not possible, but you have a workaround in this request : [JRACLOUD-75868] JQL search for issues added and removed from a sprint - Create and track feature requests for Atlassian products.

[Florian Bonniec]

Hi @Dharmender Yadav 

You have the Report available for this if you know the Sprint Report that displayed the work item removed from the Sprint.

https://support.atlassian.com/jira-software-cloud/docs/view-and-understand-the-sprint-report/

Regards

[Dharmender Yadav]

Hello @Florian Bonniec Thank you for your response. 

Is there any way to get the sprint report related data via JIRA API's or JQL ? I am specifically interested in knowing the removed issues from the sprint scope.

Thanks

[Florian Bonniec]

No there is no way I'm aware of using JQL nor API.

Regards

[Karan Sachdev]

Hey @Dharmender Yadav

Welcome to Atlassian Community!

You can review the Sprint report to get this info. Select Reports from the left menu in your board and go to Sprint Report.

Select the required sprint from the drop-down. The issues completed, not completed (moved to next sprint or backlog) and removed from the sprint are listed in the report.

Example:

[Dharmender Yadav]

Hello  @Karan Sachdev Thank you for your response. 

Is there any way to get the sprint report related data via JIRA API's or JQL ? I am specifically interested in knowing the removed issues from the sprint scope.

Thanks