Can I close a Sprint without marking its Stories as Done?

[FNU MRINAL]

Hi,

I am not allowed to move stories to "Done" status due to internal policies (Stories have to be reviewed by Business, at some future time, and then only they can be marked Done).

This is throwing my Agile metrics off-balance. My Sprint velocity is always 0.

Is it possible to:

1. Set story status to some other status (e.g. "Ready to be marked Done")

2. Map this status to DONE column in scrum-board

3. Close the Sprint without having to move these stories to some other sprint / backlog?

Your response would be highly appreciated,

Thanks

[Walter Buggenhout · Accepted solution]

Hi @FNU MRINAL and welcome to the Community!

The short answer is yes. It is technically possible to map any status to any column in a board and - when talking about velocity and completing work in a scrum board, you correctly state that items in the rightmost column of your board at the end of a sprint are the ones that are considered complete.

Obviously, that means the workflow(s) used in your project need to be adjusted. And most likely you will also need a new board (or other view) where the business keeps track of the review work they need to do after your team's delivery work is complete.

When you discuss this change, take some time to properly discuss your overall process with the organisation. If you say your velocity is always 0, that indicates the review process may be quite slow (or your sprint length is really short). See if you can't speed up the review process together with your business stakeholders.

Hope this helps!

[Vishal Biyani · Accepted solution]

@FNU MRINAL 

Sprint closure is dependent on the last most column in the scrum board.

If you add the status Ready to be marked Done, then you will be able to close the sprint with correct metrics.

[David Nickell]

At a glance - separate the concept of being done from the "after the fact review". 

• go ahead and mark everything complete
• create a new story or task called in your current sprint called "Sprint Review" (or similar) for the items in the previous sprint.
• If you have to reopen anything to be re-worked, track the story points involved.
• Eventually you'll have a metric around "story points/velocity complete" versus "points rejected ".    Work over time to get the ratio of re-work small and be sure to add a dropdown to account for who or why the ticket had to be re-opened.

Happy Agile!