Skip to content →

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.

Overview

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

Configure

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 duration, number of upcoming cycles to auto-create and automations. You'll have to set them up for each team.

Basics

View cycles

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.

Assign issues to cycles

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. Use backlog and project views make it easy to find priority issues when cycle planning. Completed issues can be moved to the last completed cycle if necessary, but not to older cycles.

Issue peek

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

Sidebar and graph

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.

Cycle description

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.

Cycle capacity

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.

Cooldowns and issue movement

Cooldowns are an optional period between the end of one cycle and the start of the next. When a cycle ends, any unfinished issues are removed from that cycle. If a cooldown is being used, those issues will automatically be added to the following cycle at the end of the cooldown. If no cooldown is used, issues will be moved directly from the previous cycle to the current cycle. If an issue is completed during the cooldown, it will be attributed to the cycle prior to the cooldown.

Change dates of an individual cycle

Update a cycle's start or end date from the contextual menu on the Cycles page. This action is available for upcoming cycles and your current cycle. Cycles will display as Paused in the timeline when dates have been manually altered to create additional cooldown time.

open menu on Cycles page showing Change cycle dates option

Rename cycles

Cycles can be renamed to be more descriptive. Right-click on a cycle from the Cycles view to modify a highlighted Cycle’s name. We automatically detect naming patterns with <Word Number> such as Week 1 and will use your custom naming pattern when creating new cycles.

Cycle calendars

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.

FAQ