When and Why do I use sprints in Kanban? (Jira)

Question

Dear Atlassians,

I am working in the demo environment of Jira, and so far I have made this distinction between Scrum and Kanban projects.

* Scrum uses timed sprints
* Kanban uses continual progress.

When changing the Functions of a Kanban project, I can toggle 'Reports'. The Reports page says it can't report any information unless I am working with sprints.

So that's where my question comes from:

* When and why do I use sprints in Kanban projects?
* Is there a way I can receive reporting on my project in Kanban projects without using sprints?

Thank you for your time.

Thomas Schlegel · Answer

The project itself is neither a scrum nor a kanban project. You create boards for your project. Either a Kanban board or a Scrum board.

You can also create many boards of different kind for the same project.

Maurice van Eijk · Answer

Hi @Thomas Schlegel ,

Thank you for your quick response!

I just toggled the "Sprint" button in my Kanban's function list with no difficulty, does this mean that my project has automatically been changed into a Scrum project?

How can I see if a running project is a Kanban or Scrum project? Is it tagged somewhere?

With kind regards,

Maurice van Eijk

Thomas Schlegel · Answer

Hi @Maurice van Eijk ,

you can't use Kanban Boards with sprints. There are some reports which are based on sprints, e.g. Burndown or Sprint reports. These reports can't be used with Kanban Boards.

You have to create a Scrum Board and start a sprint to use these reports.