Do's and Dont's for Sprint Reports

[Klaus Eisler]

I have a question about "How to correct start a sprint"

I have troubles with the expressiveness of reports and too many tasks with an asterisk mark.
Atlassian University and YouTube didn't satisfy me - so I was wondering if you can help me?

Thank you in advance!

[Joseph Chung Yin · Accepted solution]

@Klaus Eisler -

Welcome to the community.  In the Sprint Report, when you have too many issues with an asterisk mark, it is because that your scrum master and team are adding new issues to the activate sprint (after it is started).  This practice needs to be controlled and monitored very carefully.  Ideally, once the sprint is started, then no new tasks are added to the sprint unless they are absolutely needed and must be included in the active sprint.

As it will be difficult to generate a true picture of your team's velocity sprint after sprint.  Those newly added issues are not planned for the sprint.  This type of action also pointing out that your sprint planning activities need to be changed, so your team can properly plans out their sprints.

Once your sprints are completed, your team needs to conduct the proper retro to find out why those new tasks were added after the sprint was started.

Here is a link that you can take a look on sprint planning (you may already access it in the past) - https://www.atlassian.com/agile/scrum/sprint-planning

Hope this helps.

Best, Joseph Chung Yin

Jira/JSM Functional Lead, Global Infrastructure Applications Team

Viasat Inc.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

There are two reasons for adding issues into a sprint, and you should be amending your processes to reduce or eliminate it.

In an ideal sprint, nothing gets added or removed while the sprint is active. 

In real life stuff is going to happen that means something does get added (never remove, just mark it done if it's cancelled, or let it roll into the next sprint or go back into the backlog if it does still need attention), but this should always be an exceptional event, not a regular occurence.

The other reason things get added is when the team finishes all the sprint items before the end of the sprint.  They go look for the next piece of work.  There's nothing wrong with this, but if it happens a lot, then it tells you your people are either over-estimating stories, or the team should be taking in more issues into their sprint to fill their capacity.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

We can try.  What exactly is the problem with "expressiveness of reports" and what do you mean by "tasks with an asterisk mark"?

[Klaus Eisler]

maybe we can discuss this via PM - I guess it's easier with screenshots added...
thx in advance