Deleted story in a sprint stays in remaining time

Question

Hi,

I'm a beginner to JIRA. I stared my first sprint with some stories, and the estimated time was right. After I realised I made a mistake, I deleted one of my story which was estimated to 1 week.

But deleting this story did not decrease the sprint estimation of 1 week, and I now have a week more than the addition of all my remaining stories in the sprint.

Same issue in the reports, I do not have any decrease of one week and the history do not take it in account. Is it a bug, a feature or a beginner mistake ? :)

Andy Heinzer · Accepted Answer

I think this is actually by design.  I understand that you would like to see that estimate update when deleting a story from a sprint, but once you start the sprint, the estimations at the time the sprint are started are actually expected to not change.   You can add or remove items from a started sprint, but to do so does have some consquences like this.

I'd recommend taking a look back at this blog post

https://www.atlassian.com/blog/archives/having-trouble-with-scope-change-heres-a-tip

I think this quote helps to explain the reasoning for this behavior:

The reason the team estimates is give them confidence they can deliver what is in that sprint at the end of the sprint. This goes back to one of the principals of Agile – deliver working software frequently.

No one is expected to be perfect at estimating units of work for your team.   But the goal should be to get better at estimating over time, and across several sprints.