Can starting a sprint cause stories to be moved into the new sprint?

[Randy O'Neal]

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.

[Alexander Bondarev]

Hi @Randy O'Neal !

Yes, your Scrum Master can make it during the compliting active the sprint:

If the sprint has incomplete issues, select from one of the following:

• Backlog, to move the issues to the backlog

• Any future sprint, to move the issues to any future sprint that's already created

• New sprint, to create a new sprint and then move the issues to the new sprint

[Randy O'Neal]

Yes, I am aware of these options... but none of the 5 stories affected were active; none of them had any incomplete work associated to them; all 5 were stories in future sprints, pre-slotted by the Product Owner; none had any task hours burned down, and none had any tasks not in the Ready state.