Handling incomplete stories at sprint end

Question

At the end of a sprint how should incomplete stories be handled? If I moved them back into the backlog before closing the sprint then the historical record of that sprint is inaccurate, if I close the sprint with them in place I won't be able to reassign them to a subsequent sprint will I?

Gordon Walker1 · Answer

Thanks for your help, I'll look into the custom field suggestion which may help capture the situation as it actually it.

I'm not using the RapidBoard, so if I "Release" my current sprint from the Planning Board, can I still expect, " Any incomplete issues will move back into the backlog and will be visible in Plan mode" (per "Ending a Sprint")? My concern is that the incomplete stories will be locked into the released sprint and I'll have to duplicate them.

Renjith Pillai · Answer

With the classical boards from Greenhopper this was a issue by which we lose track of issues which get moved across sprints.

One of the workarounds was to also to have an additional version custom field which will contain the 'Start Sprint'. This will indicate the sprint in which it actually started.

And of course you should be doing the sprint completion by doing the Release feature of greenhopper so that the charts are captured when the sprint ends (which will show how much was carried over).