Is it possible to bulk load / bulk create multiple sprints ahead of time?

[Mindy Tran]

Is it possible to bulk load / bulk create multiple sprints ahead of time? 

As an example, say I have a project that requires 52 sprints (1 per week for the year). Is there an easy way to create all those Sprints ahead of time instead of going to the Backlog and creating each sprint manually? 

Thanks in advance for your insights.

[Johnny FromCanada]

First, #NoProjects. 😬

Next, why do you need to create sprints so far into the future?  Lean-Agile is not Mini-Waterfall.  And inventory is waste.

[Rex, Karl]

At some point one needs to stop clicking at it, as repetitive clicking brings no value.

I want to weigh in on this subject. My organization has many teams and many boards that are all lockstep to an organizational agile cadence. This way when a Devopes team communicates to the engineering team a specific sprint there is no question by the engineering team as to earliest sprint they would be able to start their development effort.

Lets talk about the number of clicks it take to create a single sprint for a single board and amount of time per click and then multiple that across the number of Jira projects and then multiple this by frequency. By not having a batch option is a big waste of resource and the opposite of value driven behavior aka Agile. 

Someone pointed out that one should not plan to far ahead, agree, but then why do we even bother with roadmaps.  

[Aaron Geister]

I never have more than 3 sprints in the backlog set up. 

Current 

Next 

Future 

Backlog 

Managing sprints in 3s as always proven more than enough for me. 

I agree with everyone here that would make the backlog a mess and be way to much to manage. 

[Joseph Chung Yin]

@Mindy Tran -

Hi Mindy:

Unfortunately it is not possible with out of the box setup.  You may develop your own custom REST APIs script to fulfill your needs.  

In general, you should reduce your future sprints (i.e. 4 to 6 max) when it is easier for the Scrum master to manage because otherwise you will need to scroll up and down in the Scrum board to manage those sprints (i.e. adding and removing issues to the sprints).

Best, Joseph Chung Yin

Jira/JSM Functional Lead, Global Infrastructure Applications Team

Viasat Inc.

[Kelly Arrey]

@Joseph Chung Yin @Mindy Tran 

I would say "Fortunately it is not possible ..." :-)

[Curt Holley]

I'm with @Johnny FromCanada on this.

Plus, any other option will be more complicated, take longer and cost more than clicking the "create Sprint" button 52 times. Which once you do the first one and set-up the weekly cadence required, is dead easy. Pro-tip: make sure the first sprint's name ends with Sprint 1, then Jira will increment by one for each subsequent sprint.

I would only create 6 to 8 at a time, just enough to do some planning without getting too far ahead of themselves. But then, I wouldn't do weekly sprints, #timeflies
By not creating them all up front, it also provides the team easier opportunities to inspect and adapt....and perhaps move to fortnightly sprints, for example.

[Kelly Arrey]

As @Curt Holley says, I wouldn't create too many sprints ahead of time.  The problem I foresee if you do create 52 sprints at once is that then they'll be in the way when you're trying to manage your backlog. Also, and obviously YMMV on this point, but slotting things into sprints more than 3 or 4 sprints out seems like it might be a waste of time because it seems likely that stuff will change between now and then. My $0.02. 

[Bhanu Prakash]

I am not sure if you already have an answer to your original Questions. 

But try to leverage Automation Rules if you are on Jira Cloud. We have an option to create Sprints in multiple ways. 

Else easier option would to use Via API's. 

[Teale McCleaf]

Hi Mindy - 

You can purchase the Structure Cross PI Planner and when you build the Sprints there, they are automatically created in each project that you indicate.  Then you can view work from several teams on one board and all in the same sprints. 

Here's the catch... If for any reason, you want to delete the sprints, you have to do it manually from each project.  So to someone else's point, maybe only building a few sprints at a time would be beneficial to start.

Someone from the Structure team met with us and showed us how to use the tool also. That's always helpful.

Hope this helps!

[Derek Adkins]

I've got some dev background, so if it was me, I'd write a script to loop and call the Jira API to create them.  I don't think there's an option to bulk upload sprints through an existing UI option.

[Derek Adkins]

JIRA Agile 7.0.4 (atlassian.com)