How to capture sprint changes in Jira

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Have you ever missed tracking essential changes in your sprint, like scope adjustments or task reassignment? You can help capture those changes in Jira with automation or other tools. In an Agile environment, where rapid changes are inevitable, manually tracking every modification to your sprint can be really overwhelming. Neglecting changes may result in missing deadlines or misplaced expectations among stakeholders. Here, we’ll explore how to leverage Jira to capture and manage these updates efficiently so you can focus more on delivering value and less on administrative overhead.

What are the key sprint changes to track?

Multiple changes usually occur when managing sprints in Jira. Before setting up automation rules, it’s essential to define what change you want to track to maintain transparency and keep your team aligned. 

1. Task completion or status changes

Example: Stories or tasks that are marked complete or transitioned to a different status (e.g., "In Progress," "Done," or "Blocked")

Tracking those updates will help you understand if the work will be completed before the sprint ends.

2. Scope changes

Example: Adding or removing issues mid-sprint

Scope changes can significantly impact sprint progress. If new tasks or user stories are added after the sprint has started or existing ones are removed, it can disrupt the team’s workflow.

3. Task reassignment

Example: Assigning tasks to different team members

It helps to monitor who is responsible for the task and ensure work can seamlessly continue without delays.

4. Priority changes

Example: Updates to the priority of tasks or stories within the sprint.

Capturing priority shifts allows the team to adjust their workflow quickly and prevents critical tasks from being overlooked.

5. Moves between sprints

Example: Stories or tasks that are moved from the current sprint to future sprints.

Moving tasks between sprints is sometimes necessary to avoid overcommitting. Automating this change ensures that tasks don’t get lost and are appropriately rescheduled in the upcoming sprints, improving planning and tracking.

➤ Tracking status changes in sprint

For this case, we will use Jira automation. You can establish a rule that automatically initiates when an issue's status changes to automate tracking tasks that are moved to a particular status (e.g., Blocked) during a sprint.

Trigger: Issue transitioned.

Conditions:

• Issue is in the current sprint (sprint in openSprints()).

• Status changed to "Blocked"

Actions:

• Add a comment: “This task has been marked as Blocked in the current sprint. Please investigate and take necessary actions.”

• Send an email notification to relevant stakeholders.

➤ Tracking sprint scope changes

The Sprint Burndown chart is a visual tool that tracks the remaining work in a sprint. Here, you can track issues added to sprint or removed from it in a chart or a table view.

➤ Tracking Jira tasks reassignment during the sprint

For the next cases, we’ll use Issue History for Jira, as it’s the easiest way to get changes for any field. The report will show how assignees were changing over time for the selected criteria. 

You just need to select the sprint and the assignee field:

➤ Tracking priority changes for issues in sprint

Here, we also have to select sprint and the priority field. You will see what issues’ priorities were changed, when, and by which user.

➤ Tracking moves between sprints

If you haven’t finished some tasks in the current sprint, they will be automatically transferred to the next sprint. Here, you can see the full history that will include all sprints an issue has been worked through.

Try to create your sprint report

How to get the report with all the changes for the sprint in Jira

With Issue History for Jira, you can also create a report with all past activities for any sprint or select a few fields that you need to track. It can include any changes such as status, time spent, assignee, description, comments, and any custom or standard field. 

A comprehensive overview of all changes that occurred during the sprint allows teams to reflect on what impacted progress and adjust their planning for future sprints.

Send report to the email

You can also save any report and schedule it to send it automatically to the email of the required recipients. Read more about Report Scheduler.

By capturing key sprint changes – such as scope adjustments, status transitions, and assignee changes – teams can stay on top of their progress. This leads to better decision-making and smoother sprint execution. 

Try to create your sprint report with all essential changes