Add ability to automate creating the next 2 sprints once the current sprint closes

[Daniela Cardenas]

For reporting and for consistent naming conventions across teams and projects, I'd like the automate the creation of sprints. 

A thought on how it could work is that once a sprint is closed, then Jira automatically creates the next two sprints with the proper date ranges. 

To configure this automation rule, you could

1) set how many sprints Jira creates automatically when a sprint closes (for my use-case, I would want the next 2 sprint; and

2) decide on the naming convention for each subsequent sprint (e.g. [YY.Quarter.SprintNumber] otherwise 23.1.5. That would mean year 2023, first quarter of the year, 5th sprint of the quarter) and tell Jira to use that naming convention. 

3) Decide on sprint duration and sprint start day and time and sprint close day and time. 

Here is a simialr but not exact same suggestion I found: https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JSWCLOUD-20563

I wouldn't want Jira to automatically close my sprints, but I do want sprints to be automatically created. 

[Ian Ragudo]

Hi @Daniela Cardenas,

Were you able to come up with a solution? 

I just published this article about Automation for Jira (A4J) integrating with Forge which you might be able to reference in building a solution to this use case, among other automation use cases.

The idea behind the article was to maximize Jira Cloud's built-in functionalities and come up with new automation solutions.

Hope you find it useful.

Ian

[Daniela Cardenas]

They essentially said the documentation was wrong that you are not able to create automation based on what it says. I also was not able to do it based on the incomplete documentation. 

[Bill Sheboy]

Thanks for that information, Daniela.

What exactly did the Atlassian Support team indicate was not accurate in the documentation for those two rule actions?

[Daniela Cardenas]

I created a support ticket and they confirmed the documentation for create sprint and start sprint are not accurate. They are going to remove this documentation as it is misleading. 

[Bill Sheboy]

I provided the rule outline earlier.  The only other part to figure out is building the new sprint's name, which you can do using the date/time and text functions to parse the current sprint.  

https://support.atlassian.com/cloud-automation/docs/jira-smart-values-text-fields/

https://support.atlassian.com/cloud-automation/docs/jira-smart-values-date-and-time/

I suggest creating a test rule first, which only creates a new sprint name and writes it to the audit log.  (Or perhaps use a test project with sprints.)

[Daniela Cardenas]

Hi Bill, 

Thank you. We have the Cloud version. I looked at your links and they don't explain how to create the automation. It just says to use smart values. I created a support ticket. 

Thanks for your help!

[Bill Sheboy]

What version of Jira are you using, Jira Cloud or Server / Data Center?

For Cloud, here are the actions for Create Sprint and Start Sprint:

• https://support.atlassian.com/cloud-automation/docs/jira-automation-actions/#Create-sprint
• https://support.atlassian.com/cloud-automation/docs/jira-automation-actions/#Start-sprint

For Server / Data Center, you could use the web request action to call the REST API to do this: 

• https://confluence.atlassian.com/automation/jira-automation-actions-993924834.html
• https://docs.atlassian.com/jira-software/REST/9.10.0/#agile/1.0/sprint-createSprint
• https://docs.atlassian.com/jira-software/REST/9.10.0/#agile/1.0/sprint-updateSprint (Update Sprint can be used to start a sprint by changing the state to "active")

[Daniela Cardenas]

Hi Bill, 

There isn't a rule action for creating the next sprint or for starting the next sprint. What you are suggesting above isn't available in Jira today (that I know of). 

I would love a rule to start the next sprint once I close/complete a sprint and have any tickets that are not closed to automatically rollover to the next sprint, but there isn't currently an automation rule for that. 

[Bill Sheboy]

Hi!

There is no built-in automatic sprint create, start, or end feature for Jira.  For the simpler scenario you describe you could make a rule like this:

• trigger: sprint started
• action: create the next one

This will allow you to add things to the next sprint over time.  Then the next rule would be:

• trigger: sprint completed
• action: start the next sprint

The first rule ("sprint started" can be triggered by the second one, and so in the rule details of the "sprint started" rule enable the "Allow Rule Trigger" option.

One of the risks to this approach is because a sprint starts automatically, it takes away the ability of the team to start the sprint only after planning has completed.  Any issues added after the sprint-start will show as scope changes and so impact reporting, forecasting, etc.

[Daniela Cardenas]

Hi Bill, 

I was asking if this was possible because I was not seeing any automation that had that capability.

After reflecting on your questions, I think I'd just want the option in your second bullet item. I think it would be better to just have the current open sprint and one future sprint created. Once the current sprint closes, the next sprint starts and then Jira automatically creates the next sprint. 

Does this functionality exist already by chance?

[Bill Sheboy]

Hi @Daniela Cardenas 

Are you asking a question regarding how to build such a rule, suggesting this as a new Jira feature, or something else?

If you are asking about creating a rule...

You describe when a sprint closes to then create two more sprints with a specific naming convention.

• Would you want your rule to arbitrarily keep creating two more, far into the future as completion will never catch up with creation?
• Or, do you want your rule to check and only create the next possible 2 sprints, as needed?  That is, there will be at most either 1 open and 1 future sprint, or 2 future sprints.
• Or, something else?

Kind regards,
Bill