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Start multiple sprints simultaneously

unknown

We have start trying out Greenhopper's Scrum rapidboard this week and it looks great.

We have 2 different teams which have there own sprint. I have created a different Scrum rapidboard for each team. It is possible to plan the productbacklog for each team, but it is not possible to start a sprint for each team because GreenHopper is limited to 1 active sprint simultaneously.

It would be better to limit the active sprints for each Rapidboard and not over all Scrum rapidboards.

Accepted answers

sclowes

Hi Yosh,

You absolutely can have multiple sprints running at once, you just cannot start a new Sprint on a board that contains issues that are already in a Sprint (as you note).

The key is that the issues that are selected by the filter for the rapid board must not select issues that are already in a Sprint. So for example, a Rapid Board that selected only issues in project X would be completely independent of a Rapid Board that selected project Y. You could achieve the same with Rapid Boards that selected different components from the same project, different labels or any of a variety of other combinations (components are the best option because sub tasks will automatically inherit the component of their parent as long as the project is enabled for GreenHopper in the global GreenHopper configuration).

If you want to have two teams drawing from the same backlog you could potentially use the following approach:

Have one 'Planning' Rapid Board that selects all of the issues you wish to work (for example the JQL might be "project = x"). Use this board to order the backlog then set the component of each of the issues for Team A or Team B
Have two other 'Work' Rapid Boards, one for each team. These would filter based on the component (for example "project = x and component = TeamA" and "project = x and component = TeamB"). You can then create sprints and start them for each team
As a bonus the 'Planning' Rapid Board will automatically show the sprints that are started on the two 'sub boards' in its work mode

In GreenHopper 6.0.3 you could also use the new parallel sprints labs feature to have the sprints for both teams on the one board. Unfortunately this will make the velocity chart less usable because velocity is heavily based on the estimations of an individual team. We would like to improve this approach in the future which is why the feature is in labs.

Regards,
Shaun

All comments

sclowes

Hi Yosh,

You absolutely can have multiple sprints running at once, you just cannot start a new Sprint on a board that contains issues that are already in a Sprint (as you note).

If you want to have two teams drawing from the same backlog you could potentially use the following approach:

Have one 'Planning' Rapid Board that selects all of the issues you wish to work (for example the JQL might be "project = x"). Use this board to order the backlog then set the component of each of the issues for Team A or Team B
Have two other 'Work' Rapid Boards, one for each team. These would filter based on the component (for example "project = x and component = TeamA" and "project = x and component = TeamB"). You can then create sprints and start them for each team
As a bonus the 'Planning' Rapid Board will automatically show the sprints that are started on the two 'sub boards' in its work mode

Regards,
Shaun

Roine Lindvall

Please vote for this feature: https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/GHS-5410

Thanks,

/Roine

Dan Burzynski

I tried making the Planning board with the JQL mentioned above, but adding 'Sprint not in openSprints()' returns nothing at all.

If I do a search for 'Sprint in openSprints()' I get back a list of all the items I was expecting for an open sprint that I was currently playing with. It seems that the 'not' in the clause isn't working correctly. Is this maybe a bug that has been fixed since 5.0.7 (I can't upgrade to 5.1 as a few plugins cause that version to break terribly)?

sclowes

Yeah, sorry, that was a bug, it needs to be "project = x and ( sprint = empty or sprint not in openSprints() )" due to the way JQL processes non existent fields. I've fixed it in my original answer above too.

Thanks,
Shaun

Dan Burzynski

So, I've tried this out, but still have an issue. Setting the filter for the 'Work' rapid board and using the 'label' (or in my case, a custom field for 'team') means that all sub-issues that are created from the parent issue wont show up in the rapid board as I don't believe that they auto inherit data from custom fields. We estimate and log work against sub tasks of stories. Since these sub tasks don't have the 'team' set, none of the work is aggregated to the parent.

I suspect that I will be lynched by my dev team if I tell them that they have to manually fill in the team for every sub-task they create. Short of creating a post-function on the 'Open' transition of all sub-tasks that copies the 'team' field, I can't think of a way of getting this to work.

Is that the only way or am I missing something?

sclowes

You're right, you will need to manually label the sub tasks. Agreed this is sub optimal, thanks for pointing it out. I'd suggest using Components instead, these are inherited by the sub tasks (at creation time).

Thanks,
Shaun

Roine Lindvall

@Shaun: The scenario of having multiple JIRA projects containing work items to be picked up by / distributed to multiple scrum teams must be common for the majority of your customers. I think you really should provide much better support in the tool to handle this scenario. It's a pain to manually manage the separation of issues, no matter if it's handled by labels, components or some custom field - this should be handled automatically by GH.

Jake Mann

I am trying to implement the workaround mentioned - do I need to change a setting for sub-tasks to inherit Components? I am not seeing this when creating new sub-tasks from the Rapid Board.

sclowes

That's strange, it definitely works for me. I'm using JIRA 5.1.

Note that the subtask just inherits whatever the components are applied to the parent at the time the subtask is created, if the components are changed after the subtask is created they will not be reflected.

Thanks,
Shaun

Sean deBardelaben

We are running 5.1.4 GreenHopper 6.0.3 and the syntax Sprint = empty or Sprint not in OpenSprints() does not work. It appears that the field Sprint is not searchable!!! Ahh, just found the GreenHopper labs button that allows me to start multiple sprints. Thanks. Appears to be working...

What is the best way to build a filter based on Sprint information?

sclowes

Are you still having your openSprints() problem? You might like to try a reindex if it's still not working.

Thanks,
Shaun

Sean deBardelaben

Reindexing fixed the problem! Thanks.

sclowes

Actually, please note that sub tasks will only inherit the component of their parent if the project is enabled for GreenHopper in the "Enabled Projects" section of the global GreenHopper configuration.

Thanks,
Shaun

Svetlana Naumov

Thank you very much! Its really working!

FaridM

Anyone still loolking for the answer:

Parallel Sprints are available under JIRA labs. Please follow this lnk to get started: https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/AGILE/JIRA+Agile+Labs#JIRAAgileLabs-ParallelSprints

Sofia Flores_6f2q3z

Any updates on this topic? Is this still the best way to have multiple sprints simultaneously? Thank you.

Ben Simmons

@Shaun Clowes [Atlassian] are there any updates to this functionality and/or new best practices for running multiple sprints off the same project?

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