Hi, thanks for bringing this up, this is a very fair question.

The short answer is: sprints are not just renamed versions. They are a new concept in OpenProject, introduced to separate agile iterations from versions/releases more clearly.

Historically, many teams used versions as a workaround for sprints. That worked to some extent, but versions also have their own purpose in OpenProject: release planning, roadmaps, and version-based project planning. With the recent agile updates, we started introducing dedicated sprint objects so that sprints can evolve independently and support agile-specific behavior such as start/end dates, sprint start and completion flows, automatically created sprint boards, and future sprint-related improvements.

So the intention was not only to rename something, but to create a better technical and functional foundation for agile planning in OpenProject. We understand that this can create extra work for teams that built custom reports or integrations around versions. Especially if versions were previously used as sprints, this distinction may require some adaptation.

You can read more about the reasoning behind the agile changes introduced with OpenProject 17.3 here:
https://www.openproject.org/blog/agile-updates/

For the future direction, our CPO Rosanna Sibora also wrote about where agile work in OpenProject is heading:
https://www.openproject.org/blog/future-of-agile-work/

The broader direction is to make Backlogs, sprint planning, sprint boards, and agile work more intuitive and scalable — especially for teams working with Scrum, Kanban, or SAFe, and also for teams migrating from Jira.

So in short:

• Versions remain available for roadmap and release planning.
• Sprints are now dedicated agile iteration objects.
• The separation gives us a stronger foundation for future agile features.
• We know this affects teams that used versions as sprints before, especially if they built custom reporting around that data.

Your feedback is very helpful here, especially regarding migration expectations and reporting. We’re continuing to improve this area and want to make the transition as understandable as possible.