Sprint Health Gadget: excluding "cancelled" issues / best practices

[Kristján Mathiesen]

Hi Community :)

The Sprint Health Gadget counts all story points in the sprint. However, some stories end up being "cancelled" yet have story points on them (for example, these stories get another resolution value than "Done") that get counted in the green (Issues Done) part:

For example, in the picture above I have 3 "cancelled" stories with the resolution value "Won't do" that have a total of 8 points. So the 24 points green bar is inflated by 8 points. I guess one way to tackle this is to remove the story points from "cancelled" stories...

I'd like your input. How are you guys excluding those "cancelled" stories from the green bar tally?

Thanks,
KGM

[Mark Segall · Accepted solution]

Hi @Kristján Mathiesen and welcome to the community!

Just one man's take... I typically don't worry about canceled issues as they usually lead to an uptick in velocity for that sprint because the team will typically be able to bring in more work as a result.  This can all be explained away during retro.

I would also say that this should be treated as an exception case.  If you're canceling issues frequently, you probably need to re-evaluate your sprint planning process to see if there is opportunity to catch cancelations before starting the sprint.

[Bill Sheboy]

Hi @Kristján Mathiesen -- Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

Yes, and...to what Mark suggested...

What does "cancelled" mean for the team.  For example, is it:

• we agreed to do this feature, the stakeholders changed their mind, and now we are not doing it...or
• we defined a goal, we met the goal, and there were a couple of "shiny" stories/sub-tasks that were not needed so we are not doing them (e.g. "stretch goals")...or
• the PO cancelled this sprint due to large business need changes, and so the stories are no longer relevant...or
• etc.

Such symptoms may be opportunities to learn and improve for backlog refinement and Sprint Planning.  And seem like good things to discuss for the team retrospective.

Kind regards,
Bill