The team didn’t deliver all the story points
Photo by Eden Constantino on Unsplash
Sometimes or maybe, often… Your team is committed to delivering a certain amount of story points, but in the end, they will only complete part of them. What can I do in this situation? The answer is pretty straightforward.
You should be transparent and put back the remaining stories in the product backlog.
Note that I wrote product backlog, not the next sprint backlog. The sprint goal of the next sprint backlog is not necessarily the same as the previous one. The unfinished stories should go to the product backlog and then, review if they bring value to the next sprint, not automatically put in the next sprint.
Since sprint length and sprint events are timeboxed, the duration won’t change. The work that isn’t completed within the iteration should return to the Product backlog and from there check what to do with them.
The following steps are generally applied to manage unfinished stories in a sprint:
1. Identify the stories that the team won’t be able to finish.
2. Document and estimate the remaining work.
3. Send these stories back to the Product Backlog.
4. Pull the incomplete Product Backlog items into the next sprint only if they meet the priority and goal of the next sprint.
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