How to View Previous Sprints in Jira

At your daily scrum meeting, your boss asks to talk with you offline about how the current sprint’s team assignments differ from past sprints. Fortunately, you don’t need to feel intimidated by the question. We’re here to guide you on how to view previous and closed sprints in Jira using Agile or Rapid Boards. 

There are more situations where you might need to review previous sprints in Jira: 

• See how your team achieved milestones in past sprints
• View a summary of completed issues vs. those that leadership tabled
• Find out how tasks were distributed amongst the team
• Reopen a sprint closed by mistake
• Access performance records for a regulatory audit

With this handy tool, you’ll have access to important historical insight to help improve current performance or satisfy requests from other stakeholders. Let’s dive in. 

How to View a Previous Sprint in Jira

From an Agile Board or Rapid Board, you can use the following methods to view past sprints. 

1. Sprint Report
2. Velocity Chart
3. Search Button

Keep in mind; not every option is available for all users. For example, to reopen a sprint, you’ll need to be a Jira administrator or a user with sprint management permissions. 

Let’s Get Started With a Sprint Report

Jira project managers use the Sprint Report to see the list of issues in a sprint. This is a valuable report when you want to check mid-sprint progress or compile historical performance for a sprint retrospective meeting. One core feature of the Sprint Report is the ability to review old sprints. Here’s how:

1. Go to Jira and open the project.
2. Go to the team Agile Board.
3. Click on Reports.
4. Select Sprint Report from the drop-down list.

Figure 1: Sprint Report selection from Agile Board

1. Choose the sprint you want to view.

Figure 2: Selection of relevant sprint

There, you’ll see all the issues related to the previous sprint:

Figure 3: List of issues in the selected sprint

How to View Previous Sprints Using a Velocity Chart

On the Velocity Chart,  you can view the average amount of work completed by a scrum team during a sprint. Teams use this chart to predict how rapidly they can work through a backlog. 

You can also use a velocity chart to view closed sprints. Here’s how it works: 

• Go to Jira and open the project.
• Go to the team Agile Board.
• Click on Reports on the left sidebar.

Figure 4: Selection of reports from board

• You’ll see several reports to choose from. Select Velocity Chart.

Figure 5: Reports section

• Choose the sprint you want to view information for. 

Figure 6: List of issues in previous sprint

How to Use the Search Feature to View Closed Sprints 

You can also use the basic Search option. Using JQL, you can build structured queries to search for sprints and issues in a project. You can also specify a search criterion for quick searches.

• Go to Jira.
• Click on the Search button.

Figure 8: Selection of Search option

• Type command sprint = ”SprintNameHere”

Figure 9: Search bar

• Once you get the results, click on the sprint to open.

Figure 10: Search results

Alternatively, if you don’t remember the sprint ID, you can get the sprint ID by typing the following command inside the browser’s developer tools console while in work mode on your rapid board:

javascript:alert(“Sprint ID is ” + jQuery(“DD[data-sprint-id]”).attr(“data-sprint-id”))

Once you get the correct Sprint ID, just type it inside the search bar to view. 

You’re Ready to View Previous Sprints! 

That’s it! With these three tips and tricks, you can easily view closed sprints in Jira. You’ll have the intel you need to answer questions from your boss or other stakeholders, while also empowering your team with useful knowledge about your past performance. 

If you have any questions, contact the Anova Apps Products team at products@anovaapps.com, or please visit the Jira Service Desk to request support, report a bug, or suggest a feature