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Cycles

Cycles are a practice to keep up your team's momentum, similar to commonly used agile flavored sprints.

Image showcasing Cycle Details including percentage success, total effort, number of days ago and a chart showing effort and scope over time.

The purpose of a cycle is to focus the team’s priorities during a set period of time. Unlike sprints, cycles are not tied to releases.

Shift C to move selected issues to cycles or change their cycle

Cmd/Ctrl Shift C to move the issue to the current cycle

Cmd/Ctrl I to open the cycle sidebar when viewing a cycle

G then C to open the Cycles view which lists active and future cycles

G then V to open the current cycle

G then W to open the upcoming cycle

O then C. to open any current or planned cycles

G then X to view archived cycles

G then S to go to Settings > Team settings > Cycles to configure settings

Beside each team in your Linear sidebar, you can click on the ... icon to then navigate to the team settings. From here, you can navigate to the team's cycle settings to configure cycles and customize the timing and automations. You'll have to set them up for each team. Read how.

See a list of all cycles for your team under the Cycles view in the sidebar. Open the list of cycles with G then C, active cycle with G then V, upcoming cycle with G then W, or a menu of all current and future cycles for your team with O then C.

Add issues to a cycle from the issue editor or from any board or list view. Select the issue, then use keyboard shortcut Shift C to assign issues to a cycle or save a step with Cmd/Ctrl Shift C to assign it to the active cycle. Use backlog and project views make it easy to find priority issues when cycle planning.

Use Issue Peek to view issue description and details without having to leave the cycles list view.

Bring up the cycle details sidebar using Cmd/Ctrl I while viewing any individual cycle. You can read more about the cycle graph in our documentation here.

Add a description to cycles to clarify your team's focus during that cycle. Click on the cycle name, select Edit, and then add the Description in the text field under the name.

For cycles that have not yet started, you'll see a capacity dial that shows an estimate on whether your team will be likely to complete all the issues added to the cycle. Capacity is calculated from the velocity of the previous three completed cycles, i.e. the number of issues or estimate points completed in these cycles. If the team has not completed any cycles previously, capacity will be roughly estimated from the number of members in the team.

Keep up with your Linear cycles in your preferred calendar application by visiting your team's cycle page, clicking on the overflow menu on a cycle and choosing Subscribe to cycle calendar. Choose to add to Google Calendar, copy a feed URL or download the calendar as an .ics file: whichever best suits your needs.