Sprint Management

Create recurring sprint schedules and automate issue management to streamline your team's agile workflow

What are sprints in Zenhub?

Sprints are fixed time periods where your team commits to completing a specific set of work. Zenhub's sprint feature helps you organize issues into time-boxed iterations, track progress with burndown charts, and maintain consistent delivery cadences.

When you set up sprints in Zenhub, you're creating a recurring schedule that automatically generates future sprints based on your team's cadence. This eliminates the need to manually create each sprint and provides predictable planning cycles for your team.

Creating your first sprint schedule

To set up sprints in your workspace, click the green "+ Create" icon in the top right corner of your workspace and select "Sprints." This opens the sprint creation panel where you'll configure your recurring schedule.

Sprint Schedule configuration: In the Sprint Schedule section on the right side, you'll specify your first sprint's start and end dates using the calendar interface. Click on your desired start date, then select the end date. A two-week cadence is recommended for most teams as it provides enough time to complete meaningful work while maintaining frequent delivery cycles.

Once you select your sprint dates, Zenhub automatically calculates the cadence and displays the next eight upcoming sprints in the "Upcoming Sprints" section on the left side of the panel.

Managing upcoming sprints

The Upcoming Sprints section shows your next eight scheduled sprints with their date ranges. Each sprint can be customized before it begins.

Renaming sprints: Hover over any sprint name to see a pencil edit icon appear on the right. Click this icon to rename the sprint with a more descriptive title that reflects your team's goals or the features you plan to deliver.

Adding sprint details: Each sprint has an "Add a brief Sprint goal..." field where you can document the sprint's objective, key deliverables, or focus areas. This helps align the team on what success looks like for that sprint.

Sprint automation features

Zenhub provides automation to reduce manual sprint management tasks. These settings appear in the "Automatically add Issues to a sprint" section.

Move unfinished issues to the next sprint: Enable this toggle to automatically move open issues from a completed sprint into the next sprint. This ensures work doesn't get lost between sprint cycles and maintains continuity for incomplete tasks.

Build new sprints from the backlog: When enabled, this feature automatically populates upcoming sprints with issues from your backlog pipeline. At the end of your current sprint, Zenhub builds the next sprint using issues from the configured backlog pipeline.

This automation requires pipeline mapping to work correctly. In the Workflow configuration section, you'll see "Pipelines configured" with a green checkmark when your board pipelines are properly mapped. Click this to configure which pipelines represent each stage of your workflow:

• Backlog pipeline: Where new issues await sprint assignment

• Sprint Backlog pipeline: Where sprint-committed issues begin

• In Progress pipeline: Active work during the sprint

• Review pipelines: Work pending approval or testing

• Completed pipeline: Finished work

Capacity management: The "Add up to the first [X] Story points" setting shows a recommended capacity based on your team's average velocity from recent sprints. This helps prevent overcommitment and maintains sustainable development pace.

Modifying existing sprint schedules

Once you've created your sprint schedule, you can modify it by clicking the green "+ Create" icon and selecting "Modify recurring sprints." This opens a similar panel where you can adjust your schedule.

Changing sprint cadence: Use the Sprint Schedule dropdown to select a different recurring pattern (every 1 week, 2 weeks, 3 weeks, etc.). The system will recalculate future sprints based on your new cadence.

Turning off sprints: If you need to disable the sprint feature, look for the "Turn off sprints" button at the bottom of the modification panel. This stops creating new sprints while preserving historical sprint data.

Updating automation settings: You can enable or disable the automation features at any time through the modify panel. Changes apply to future sprints and don't affect currently active sprints.

Sprint planning best practices

Start with realistic capacity by using the velocity guidance in the workflow configuration to avoid overcommitting. It's better to complete fewer issues consistently than to carry over work between sprints frequently.

Set clear sprint goals using the sprint goal field to document what your team aims to achieve. This helps with focus and provides context for stakeholders reviewing sprint progress.

Align sprint timing with team schedules by considering your team's meeting schedules, holidays, and other commitments when setting sprint start and end dates. Consistent timing helps build sustainable rhythms.

Review and adjust by monitoring your sprint completion rates and adjusting your automation settings or capacity planning as your team's velocity stabilizes and improves over time.

FAQ

Q: Can I change sprint dates after they're created?
A: Yes, you can modify the recurring schedule which affects future sprints. However, active sprints should be changed carefully to avoid disrupting team commitments and reporting accuracy.

Q: What happens to issues when I turn off sprints?
A: Existing sprint assignments remain intact for historical reporting. Future sprints won't be created, but you can still manage issues on your Work Tracker without sprint organization.

Q: How does the backlog automation know which issues to include?
A: The system pulls issues from your configured backlog pipeline based on priority and the story point capacity settings. Issues already assigned to future sprints won't be duplicated.

Q: Can I have different sprint lengths for different workspaces?
A: Yes, each workspace manages its own sprint configuration independently. Teams working on different products or with different cadences can set up sprints with completely different schedules, automation settings, and capacities.

Q: How do I sync sprints across multiple workspaces?
A: Sprints cannot be automatically synced between workspaces. You'll need to manually configure the same sprint schedule in each workspace where you want consistent timing. If your team needs unified sprint management across multiple repositories, consider consolidating them into a single workspace.

Q: What if my team doesn't estimate issues with story points?
A: The capacity recommendations require story point estimates to function. Teams not using story points can still create sprints manually but won't benefit from the velocity-based capacity suggestions.

Q: How far in advance does Zenhub create sprints?
A: The system shows the next eight upcoming sprints in the planning interface. This provides roughly 4 months of visibility for teams using two-week sprints, allowing for longer-term planning while maintaining flexibility.

Q: How can I adjust the duration of a single sprint without affecting the entire sprint schedule (for example to create a shorter sprint at the end of the year to account for holidays)
A: Currently, Zenhub does not support changing the start or end dates of a specific sprint directly. If you need to adjust sprint durations, you can follow this workaround:

• Stop the existing sprint schedule on the last day of the active sprint.

• Create a new sprint schedule with the desired shorter duration.

This method allows you to manage sprint lengths flexibly, even though it requires creating a new schedule.

Q: How can I create a sprint that's longer than 4 weeks?
A: Zenhub sprints are designed for shorter iterations, typically no more than one month long. If you wish to track work over a year, consider using Zenhub Releases or creating parent issues to manage longer-term objectives.