See Previous / Completed Sprints In Jira

Whether you’re looking to view past Sprints, get more information about the team’s performance on average for planning, or simply closed a Sprint by mistake – Jira’s UI sure as hell isn’t making your life easier. I guess that’s what this guide is for then, huh?

Use reports to view completed Sprints

If you’d like to revisit previously closed Jira Sprints, you can use several reports in Jira. This functionality is typically accessible from the sidebar in your Jira instance. If, for some reason, you don’t see the Reports tab – contact your Project Administrator, as they are the only ones who can enable this functionality.

There are also slight differences between reports in team-managed and company-managed projects. The process of getting to the part that you need is pretty similar though. 

1. Open the reports tab from the sidebar.

2. Open either the Burnup Report or the Burndown Chart if you are on a team-managed project. Additionally, if you are on a company-managed project, you can look for Sprints in the Sprints and Velocity reports.
   
3. Pick the Sprint you’d want to see from the dropdown. 

4. Or, if you are viewing the Velocity report on a company-managed project – click on the Sprint you’d like to inspect closer.

5. Scroll down to see the list of issues in the Sprint. Additional information may vary slightly from report to report, but generally, you’ll be able to review the issues, their key, summary, status, type, story points, and priority.

For example, this is how you’ll see your Sprint in the Burnup Chart on a company-managed project.

And this is how you will see the same Sprint in the Velocity Chart, after clicking on it.

View past sprints with JQL

Reports are not the only way to search for issues in closed Sprints. You can also use JQL to search for issues that are assigned to a closed Sprint. 

For example, you can use the following String to list your Sprints and issues within them:

 However, JQL will return ALL issues that meet your criteria. Jira will look at the Sprint field on the issues to fulfill your request. This will be a long list. You can make your life a bit easier by manually selecting the column you’d like to see and sort by Sprints. The report will be much more visible this way. 

Note that this means the JQL query will also return the issues that have multiple values in their Sprint field. If this happens, you’ll only see the issue once under the Sprint it was originally assigned to. It will also list all of the Sprints it has been a part of.

But if it is, you can try figuring out a workaround. For example, you can use dates and status change to show which tickets have moved to status X during a Sprint. This can be useful if you want to find out more about the issues that have been moved to a certain status if, for example you use Ready for Testing as Definition of Done in your Sprints.  

Reopen past Sprints

Note

I wouldn’t recommend reopening Sprints. This process can cause a pretty big mess as it might merge the Sprint that is currently running with the reopened one.

Nevertheless, Atlassian made this surprisingly easy to do. All you need are Jira admin permissions.

1. Open the Sprints Report from the Reports tab.
2. Select a Sprint you’d like to reopen from the drop-down.
3. Click on the three dots on your right and choose the option to reopen the selected Sprint. 

The process is the same for team-managed projects, with the only difference being that you’ll be using the Burnup report.

1. Open the Burnup Report or the Burndown Chart from the Reports tab.
2. Select a Sprint you’d like to reopen from the drop-down.
3. Click on the button with three dots and select the option to reopen your Sprint.

Looking to learn more about guides, how-to’s, and Jira best practices? Stay tuned to our blog. 

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Article by Oleksandr Siryi