Can I delete stories/ sub-tasks not completed in a sprint, which are in backlog now?

Question

Can you advise what to do in this case:

We've started 2nd sprint for our project, and we have 2 stories which were not completed during the 1st sprint (only 1 sub-task was complited) and now they are back to the backlog. We've already started new sprint(2) by adding those not completed tasks from previous sprint as a new stories/sub-tasks, and we did small changes eg.: we deleted one sub-task, sub-task became a story...

I've added this one complited sub-task to a new parent story in the 2nd sprint, but the rest I don't need. Can I just simply delete those two stories which are in backlog now from Sprint 1 ??

I'm not sure how it works, this is our second sprint - so we'are learning based on our mistakes - but I don't now what to do with them, I don't want to affect sprint reports/team velocity... but I cannot leave them in the backlog as they are stil a part of sprint 1 - uncompleted work...

Alexey Matveev · Answer

You should add the Canceled status and change the filter for the board. You should move issues to the Canceled status only if the issues are not going to be completed. These issues will not be visible in the backlog. But all previous statistics must be still available. You can check it first on a test instance or in a test project.

Malgorzata Niestatek · Answer

Thanks Alexey for your answer!
hmm but now those stories are in backlog, so when i'll create new status canceled, will be able to put them there in 1st sprint or in the next sprint(in this case 3rd, 2nd is already on-going)?
This new staus won't affect later some reports etc.?

I'm not sure if I can delete them as this can also affect team capacity for the completed sprint.. but maybe it's better to have some mess at first sprint than keeping them somewhere else...?

Alexey Matveev · Answer

Hello,

If you delete this issue, they will dissapear from the first sprint too. If you want to save them in the history in the first sprint, then add a status like Canceled and change the filter for the board so ,that it does not select issues in the Canceled status.