Sprints are time-boxed periods for a team to complete a pre-defined set of work. They’re commonly used by engineering teams but are popular with other teams too.

When enabled, Superthread will create special boards for viewing the work in your current sprint, planning your next sprint, and keep a record of what you got done in past sprints.

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Enable sprints for a space

You can turn Sprints on by going to Settings > Spaces > Sprints for your chosen space. This will:

  • Add a sprints section in the sidebar for that space.
  • Add a new field inside of cards to show which sprint it has been added to.

**Note: **only the workspace owner, admins, or the owner of that space can turn on sprints.

If you use sprints, we still recommend creating at least one regular board for triaging your backlog. You can move cards from the backlog board into sprints as you plan ahead.

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Setting a schedule

In Superthread, sprints are essentially boards with a start and end date. Superthread can help create these boards for you by configuring these options:

  • **Sprint length **– can be from 1 to 8 weeks.
  • **Sprint start day **– the day of the week you want sprints to start on.
  • **Cooldown period **– some teams like to create a buffer between sprints to allow for feedback, bug fixing, and tech debt before starting their next sprint. You can choose how long you want the cooldown period to be.
  • Sprint statuses – this defines the workflow (columns) in your sprint boards. Every sprint board in the space will have this set of statuses in it.

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Sprint automation

Next sprint

If the current sprint ends and you haven’t created the next sprint board yet, Superthread will automatically create a new sprint board for you.

Card rollover

Any cards that have not been completed in the current sprint will automatically be moved to the next sprint so they can be finished off.

Pull request automation

If you’re using our GitHub integration, you can create rules that will automatically move a card to a specific status when a pull request linked to that card is opened/merged/closed. For example if a PR is merged to staging, you can move the card to _In QA _status.

This can be configured from Settings > Spaces > Boards > Sprint boards

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Managing sprints

Each Space can only have one ‘active’ sprint. A space cannot run multiple sprints in parallel.

If you want to have more than one ‘active’ sprint, you will need to create a new Space and configure it there.

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Planning future sprints

Each time you click the ‘Add sprint’ button, an ‘upcoming sprint’ will be created with start and end dates that match the schedule you configured in the sprint settings page. For example if you configured sprints to start on a Monday, adding a new sprint will schedule it to start on the next available Monday. The sprint end date will be set based on the sprint duration you configured (e.g. in 2 weeks time).

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Changing sprint dates

You can manually tweak the start and end dates for planned sprints by clicking on the 3 dot menu of the sprint. This is useful if you need to adjust dates for public holidays or make one-off changes to your schedule.

Sprints dates cannot overlap with each other and you cannot change the start date of a sprint that has already started.

Cooldown periods

If you have configured a cooldown period between sprints, extending the end date of a sprint will eat into the cooldown period. This helps you preserve the planned start day for your other future sprints.

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Completing a sprint early

If you have started a sprint, and want to ‘Mark it as complete’ ahead of schedule, you can do that by clicking on the 3 dot menu on the right hand side of the sprint. This will end the current sprint and automatically roll-over any unfinished cards to the next sprint.

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Cancelling a sprint

If you want to abandon a sprint that has already started, you can choose to ‘Cancel’ it. This marks the sprint as finished and moves all the incomplete cards to a ‘Cancelled’ status.

You can only cancel the ‘Current sprint’. Sprints that are planned for the future cannot be cancelled, but you can adjust their start dates.

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Viewing sprints

For a given space, click on the ‘Sprints’ section in the sidebar to view all your sprints. Here you can view the current sprint, create new sprints to plan ahead, and browse any completed sprints.

The current and next sprint will also be visible on the homepage for each space.

Each space can only have one ‘current’ sprint. You cannot start a new sprint until the current one is finished. You cannot run multiple sprints at the same time.

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Favourite the ‘current sprint’

You can favourite a future or completed sprint to pin it to your sidebar for quick access.

You can also favourite the ‘current sprint’ instead of a specific sprint. This way, when the current sprint ends and a new one begins, your favourite will automatically update to link to the new sprint, so you don’t have to update it manually.

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Adding cards to a sprint

There are a few ways to add cards to a sprint:

  • Space homepage – here you can drag a card from a board into a current or future sprint. For example from a backlog board into a sprint.
  • Card sidebar – use the ‘Add to sprint’ option in the sidebar of a card. You can select the current, or any future sprints you have planned in that space. The sprint option will only be visible on cards that are in spaces with sprints enabled.
  • Add to sprint menu action – in the 3 dot menu that can be accessed by hovering on a card in board,

You cannot move cards in to a completed (previous) sprint unless that card is in a ‘Done’ status.