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More work discovered for carryover story: Re-estimate or not

Last post 08:19 pm November 15, 2019 by Ian Mitchell
3 replies
Simi BA
11:27 pm November 14, 2019

Hi,

What should we do in situations where a team moves an unfinished story to the next sprint and also realizes that the subtasks have got increased (more work is needed on that story than planned).  This was a 5 pointer story and team feels that based on this discovery, this story should be changed to 8 story points for next sprint. I dont feel this is right and told them that rather than changing story points, we should analyse it during retro and understand what could be the reasons for this change in subtasks so that we can improve the estimations in future. Please let me know if I am wrong as some scrum masters in my company allow their teams to reestimate unfinished stories and my team feels I am being harsh. 

Harshal Rathee
03:39 pm November 15, 2019

What should we do in situations where a team moves an unfinished story to the next sprint and also realizes that the subtasks have got increased (more work is needed on that story than planned).  This was a 5 pointer story and team feels that based on this discovery, this story should be changed to 8 story points for next sprint.

What do you think about the transparency ? Does this old estimation reflects reality even when team has discovered more efforts to finish it? 

What do you think about this part of Scrum Guide ? 

The Development Team modifies the Sprint Backlog throughout the Sprint, and the Sprint Backlog emerges during the Sprint. This emergence occurs as the Development Team works through the plan and learns more about the work needed to achieve the Sprint Goal.

 

 

 

 

 

 

John Varela II
04:00 pm November 15, 2019

As a Scrum Team, perhaps pose the following questions and allow each person to write their answer on a sticky and see how many different perspectives you get.

  • Why estimate any Story?
  • What is the benefit of leaving the estimate as it is?
  • What is the benefit of changing it?
  • What is the deliverable/purpose of a Sprint?

Often the pushback comes in defense of affecting what they feel makes them valuable to the company, and that's consistent output.

IF that's the case, this is a great opportunity to bring everyone together on understanding their purpose is to achieve predictable outcomes with as little work as possible. Focusing specifically on 3 of the 12 Agile principles:

  • 1. Our highest priority is to satisfy the Customer, through early and continuous delivery of the valuable software
  • 7. Working software is the primary measure of progress.
  • 10. Simplicity – the art of maximizing the amount of work not done – is essential. 
Ian Mitchell
08:19 pm November 15, 2019

What should we do in situations where a team moves an unfinished story to the next sprint

Why aren’t they re-estimating it on the Product Backlog to reflect the amount of work that is thought to remain?

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