What the Sprint Health gadget actually shows
The native Sprint Health gadget summarises one active sprint along four dimensions. You configure it by selecting a board and a sprint; everything else is computed by Jira.
| Dimension | What it measures | Where the data comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Work complete | Story points (or count) of completed issues vs total committed | Issue status + the sprint's "Done" mapping |
| Blockers | Number of issues flagged as Impediment, or blocked by an "is blocked by" link | The Flagged field and Jira issue link types |
| Scope change | Issues added or removed after the sprint started | Sprint history (sprint field changes after sprint start) |
| Time elapsed | Calendar days into the sprint vs total sprint length | Sprint start and end dates |
Quick read: if work complete is well below time elapsed, you're behind. If scope change is high mid-sprint, the team committed to something different than what they're now delivering. If blockers are growing, the team's hands are tied somewhere they can't fix.
How to add the gadget to a dashboard
- Open the dashboard where the gadget should appear (or create a new one via Dashboards → Create dashboard).
- Click Add gadget at the top right.
- Search for
Sprint Healthand click Add. - Select the board (Scrum board, not Kanban — the gadget only works on boards with active sprints).
- Select the sprint — typically the currently active one.
- Click Save.
The gadget refreshes whenever the underlying Jira data changes; you don't need to do anything to update it after sprint events.
Filtering and limitations
This is the part most people don't realise until they hit it. The Sprint Health gadget is a fixed sprint-level summary. It does not accept a JQL filter to narrow by assignee, label, or component. There is no way to ask "show me sprint health for just the backend team" via the gadget itself.
Workarounds:
- Multiple boards, one per team — if your sub-teams already have separate boards, add one Sprint Health gadget per board to the same dashboard. Clunky but it works.
- Filter Results gadget — to see which issues are scope-changed or blocked, add a Filter Results gadget with a JQL like
sprint in openSprints() AND flagged is not EMPTYnext to the Sprint Health tile. - Custom dashboard composition — pair the Sprint Health gadget with a progress-tracking gadget that does accept JQL, to drill down per issue.
"It's not showing scope change" — and other gotchas
The most common complaint about the gadget is "scope change is zero even though we definitely added work". A few things to check:
- The sprint has to be active. Issues added before sprint start are part of the original commitment — that's by design. Only issues moved into the sprint after Start Sprint was clicked count as scope change.
- Removing an issue counts too. Pulling something out of the sprint mid-flight is scope change, even though it feels like a courtesy.
- The board's sprint mapping matters. The gadget reads the board's Done column to decide what's complete. If your "Done" column doesn't include all done statuses (e.g. only "Done" but you also have "Released"), work complete will undercount.
- Story-point fields. If your team uses Time Estimate or a custom estimation field rather than Story Points, the work-complete number defaults to issue count, which can mislead.
The per-issue visibility gap
Sprint Health tells you whether the sprint is on track. It does not tell you which individual issues are stuck. Mid-sprint, the question that actually matters is "which three tickets need a conversation today?" — and the Sprint Health gadget can't answer that, because it only reports the aggregate.
For that you need per-issue progress visible across the sprint. The native option is the board itself (drag cards across columns, eyeball where things sit). The board is good for status but weak for two things: it doesn't show how far along each in-progress card is, and it doesn't scale to 30+ issues without becoming a wall.
Adding a progress gadget alongside Sprint Health
A second gadget — one that shows per-issue progress in a table — complements Sprint Health well. The Visual Progress Tracker app adds a Progress Tracker Overview dashboard gadget that does exactly this:
- Sortable table of every issue, with a colour-coded progress bar per row.
- Three calculation modes — Subtasks (resolved / total), Status (workflow mapping), or Manual (user-set slider).
- JQL filter support — narrow to
sprint in openSprints(), or further to a team viaassignee in membersOf("backend-team"). - Bounded result set on very large projects so the gadget stays fast; a note appears when more issues exist than were loaded so you know to refine the filter.
Dashboard layout that works: Sprint Health gadget across the top (sprint-level summary), Progress Tracker Overview below it filtered to sprint in openSprints() (per-issue table). Top half answers "how is the sprint going?", bottom half answers "which tickets need attention?".
Frequently asked questions
What is the Jira Sprint Health gadget?
A native Jira dashboard gadget that summarises one sprint along four dimensions: work complete, blockers, scope change, and time elapsed. It is configured by board and sprint.
Why is my Jira Sprint Health gadget not showing scope change?
Scope change only counts issues moved in or out of the sprint after it started. Issues added before the sprint was started are part of the original commitment and are not flagged as scope change. Also verify the board's sprint mapping and that the gadget is pointed at the currently active sprint.
Can I filter the Jira Sprint Health gadget by team or label?
No — the native Sprint Health gadget does not accept a JQL filter. It always reports the full sprint. To slice by team, label, or assignee, pair it with a JQL-driven gadget such as the Filter Results gadget or the Progress Tracker Overview gadget from Visual Progress Tracker, both of which accept arbitrary JQL.
Why are blocked issues not showing up in the gadget?
Blockers are counted via the Flagged field and "is blocked by" issue link types. If your team marks blockers with a label or a custom field instead, the gadget won't see them. Either standardise on the Flagged field, or add a Filter Results gadget alongside that picks up your custom convention.
How is sprint health different from per-issue progress?
Sprint health is a single sprint-level summary — four numbers describing the sprint as a whole. Per-issue progress shows where each individual issue stands. Sprint health tells you whether the sprint is on track; per-issue progress tells you which specific tickets are stuck. Most teams need both.
Add per-issue progress to your Sprint Health dashboard
Visual Progress Tracker adds a JQL-filterable dashboard gadget and three progress field types to Jira — pair it with Sprint Health for both levels of visibility.
Try it free on Marketplace →