Starting and stopping sprint time

[Chris Berry]

In Jira, when you create a sprint, it asks for a start date + time and an end date + time.

If I have my sprint start as 12:00 AM, does that mean I have to start it then on the dot or any time for that matter. If it's set to 8:00 AM, what happens if I "press start" at 10:00 am? Will it throw off some type of metric?

I guess I don't understand how that works because having to put in a start/stop time in Jira makes no sense considering you have to manually do it. The "start" time should be whenever I press start, and the "complete" time should be when I hit complete.

[Trudy Claspill · Accepted solution]

Hello @Chris Berry 

The start and end dates and times you enter are "plans" only. The date and time will be recorded as the actual dates and times when you click the buttons.

The planned dates/times you enter enable the display of the sprint duration in the Timeline view.

[Chris Berry · Accepted solution]

Thanks to everyone who replied. I find it almost unfathomable that this is not a built in option. One could easily tell the system what to do when completing a sprint -> move items to next sprint/backlog. 

I figured out how to do this via api calls and automation. I now have a working auto start and stop sprint set of rules.

Thanks

[Trudy Claspill]

Hello @Chris Berry 

I'm glad you found a solution.

I encourage you to consider writing an Article for the community to explain the solution you found. I'm sure others would greatly appreciate learning from your experience.

If that interests you, check out this post:

An Update on the Atlassian Authors group! 

[Alina Chyzh_Grandia Solutions]

Hi, @Chris Berry 

The sprint start and end times you set are primarily used for planning and reporting purposes rather than enforcement. When you manually start a sprint at a different time than scheduled, Jira doesn't prevent you from doing so, and your sprint will simply begin at the actual time you clicked start. The main impact is on burndown charts and velocity reports, which use the scheduled dates to draw trend lines and calculate ideal progress, so if you consistently start sprints at different times than planned, those visualizations may look slightly off but your core metrics like completed story points remain accurate.

If you want to eliminate manual sprint starts entirely and have sprints begin automatically at their scheduled time, you could use an automation solution. Our team built Automation Action Bundle for Jira, which adds a Start Sprint action to Jira's native automation engine, allowing you to trigger sprint starts based on scheduled rules or other conditions. You can find it here: https://bit.ly/4tG3JUR

[Arkadiusz Wroblewski]

Hello @Chris Berry 

The only part that can skew reports is when the sprint start date/time is left earlier or later than the real start. Atlassian saying that if the start date is set too early, work added later can look like scope creep. If it is set too late, earlier activity can be excluded from reports. 

Here some KB Article for Learning:

Plan a Sprint  

Enable sprints