Multiple values in Sprint

[Srinath Ramakrishnan]

During closing of a Sprint, our team  moves all the issues of the current Sprint to the next Sprint.  We notice that by doing so, we have the Sprint value also carried forward to the next Sprint - and if, by any chance, an issues takes 3 sprints to complete - all the 3 Sprint values are stored for that issue.   

Another approach, before closing a sprint is to "blank" the Sprint value, and take that item up as part of the next Sprint.  In this way, we have only 1 value in the Sprint field.

Would like to hear from this group, what are the pros and cons of these approaches - and are there any issues with getting metrics by using the first approach.

Appreciate your responses.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Accepted solution]

Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

Well, ouch, to begin with - the whole point of a sprint is that you are only supposed to take in work you can complete in the sprint.  If you're moving things from sprint to sprint regularly, you're failing - your estimates are wrong, or you're over-committing, or you're not doing anything resembling Scrum.  It should be an exception when an issue moves from one sprint to the next, and something that you should be able to explain at the end of the sprint (Alice was ill, Bob's dog chewed their network cable, Charlie got dragged out for emergency support work in production, etc)

Anyway.  No, leave the sprint well alone, do not "blank" anything.  If you do that, you're destroying the information that you even tried it, so you've got no way to report on potential improvements or what happened earlier!  It'll make a nonsense of your estimates, and most of your reporting.

Instead, I would look at why too much work is overflowing.

[Srinath Ramakrishnan]

Thanks Nic. 

Just to clarify a couple of things - moving items to the next Sprint is basically due to dependencies - which are outside the control of the team.

Two, when I meant "blank" the Sprint value, it is moving the issue to the backlog to be picked up again in the next Sprint.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

I understand that, but it doesn't actually matter.  If a dependency is not in place for a story, then the story is not ready to go into a sprint, it should be skipped until the dependency is dealt with.  

Returning an issue to the backlog is not done by blanking out the sprint.  That destroys your reporting information.  Just move it back to the backlog, and then your reporting will show "removed from sprint"