Period (program increment)

A Period is a time frame (called PI or Program Increment / Planning Interval in SAFe®) , used to plan and progress iteratively at program level.

A period contains a set of sprints (iterations). Some organizations have one period per quarter (e.g. “2020 Quarter 4”).

Create a new period

To create a new period:

Navigate to the cycle page.
Click on Create a period
Choose a period name and key. The key has to be unique, and should be meaningful (e.g. 2024Q4).
Choose the number of sprints in the period
Click on Create

Complete the period configuration:

Define start and end dates for each sprint.
Map the sprints at program level to the sprints of each team working Scrum. Use the 'Auto-assign sprints' and 'Create missing sprints' buttons to do this automatically. You can also do it manually by selecting a Jira sprint for each team / program sprint combination. By default, only open sprints are shown. Click 'Show closed sprints ' to also include sprints that are closed.
Click on Save or Submit

You don’t need to configure all sprints at the same time. You can map some sprints, save progress and come back later to complete the mapping. If a new sprint is created in the backlog of a team, you can click on the 'refresh sprints'

You can use your keyboard and type in a part of the name of a sprint to find it fast. You can also copy/paste text into the select field.

Auto-assign sprints

Auto-assign sprints based on the Jira sprint start and end date configuration. The start and end dates of the Jira sprint should approximately match with the start and end dates of the sprints in the program.

The matching only works for teams that are configured using a Jira board.

Click the 'Assign' button to auto-assign sprints .

Create missing sprints

Ativo can create missing sprints directly on the Jira boards.

The sprint creation only works for teams that are configured using a Jira board.

First click on 'Create missing'. Then defined the sprint start & ending hours. Then click on 'Create sprints'.

Can't find my sprint

Did you create a sprint but can't find it on the drop-down list?

First try to 'Refresh sprints' if you've recently created the sprint. Click 'Show closed sprints' if you also want to see sprints that have been closed.

Still can't find it? It then depends if the team is configured using a 'Jira board', or in a 'custom way'. You can switch your team configuration between 'Jira board' and 'custom'.

Jira board teams

For teams configured using a Jira board, the sprint must be created on that board.

Custom teams

For teams configured in a custom way, sprints from Jira Scrum boards that have a JQL filter which includes a reference to the projects used in the team are shown. Due to limitations in the Jira API, we cannot show other sprints.

E.g. If team 'Bear' uses Jira Project 'Bear', then the board of team Bear needs to use a JQL filter that explicitly refers to the 'Bear' Jira project.

To add your sprint to the list:

Open the Jira board on which the sprint is created
Open the board configuration (context menu on the top right)
In the general tab, locate the JQL filter
Click “update filter“
Add an explicit reference to the Jira project(s) used by the team. E.g. replace category in (…) byproject in (…)
Save the filter