Re-estimate unfinished story when moving to next sprint or not?

[Margarita Artemyan]

Hi everyone, 

I have this situation in the sprint. 

We have estimated the story for 8 story points and completed the functional part, while deploying (and possibly testing remained), so the story didn't deliver for the sprint. 
when we move the story to the next sprint should we re-estimate it? i guess yes, but if we give the story 1 or 3 story points and complete in the sprint, then those 5 story points (8-3) will be lost. 
so how you deal in this situations? 

[Mirek · Accepted solution]

Definitely re-estimate. It is all about getting your team velocity and learning from how many story points you were able to do. That is what you should talk about on the retrospective. The fact that values were not burned down is not having that value like talking with the team "why" actually the chart looks like that. Thanks to that you would see things for improvement in your planning meeting .. Next time you might for example want to also break the main story into smaller stories and reduced estimated values to "burn them". Over time you should get better velocity, better team that proactively estimate and a perfect burndown chart. Scrum is called an agile methodology, so we need to also be agile before starting every sprint :)

If you do not know it yet.. I suggest looking at new #YourAgileCoach and #AgileCorner videos where you might get some inspiration about estimation but also other key points of Agile :)

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLaD4FvsFdarT0B2yi9byhKWYX1YmrkrpC

[Margarita Artemyan]

thanks for the answer. So if you re-estimate the story again and for example make the story points lesser than the initial story points (go to 3 story point from 8), those 5 story points are just being lost? so you don't mention it in neither on previews sprint review nor in the current? 

[Mirek]

They are not being "lost".. You see for example in Jira on the Velocity Chart your commitment in the last sprint and on the Burndown Chart that you have X tasks (stories) with Y (story points) and you were not able to burn them all..

On next sprint you would re-estimate.. check your team velocity and see how many task you should include in the sprint so that team can burn them all (or as many they can) .. Your task now would have 3 story points (since it is logical because you did some work already and it would be easier than sprint ago)

In other words every sprint gives you some input.. that you discuss on retrospective meeting which you want to improve on next sprint.. That is why in most of the cases you do a estimation and planning again.. Keeping it at 8 and doing faster would confuse everyone and break all of your charts

But remember one general rule.. do not re-estimate when the sprint already started. This should be done when it is completed and you have see what was the progress and check if the estimation was good or bad..