I had to step out this last week for a personal matter on the day I would normally end the previous sprint and start the new sprint. I asked a peer to do this on my behalf during my absence.
Today, I discovered that during the process of starting the new sprint, 5 stories were added to our new sprint; this made the difference of a team commitment by +25%; we picked up 25% more than the team intended to commit to for the sprint. All the history in the individual stories indicate that the other Scrum Master added the stories to the sprint and adjusted the story priority. This happened to all 5 stories at the same time. I should add that the other Scrum Master claims the only thing executed was to start the sprint; no individual stories were moved... yet they were.
Is there any possible explanation as to what might have happened? I've been closing, starting, and managing sprints now for 14 months and have never seen anything of this kind of behavior. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.
