How many times has it been when the iteration is over but not all User Stories have been done. Spillover is a frown-upon practice, however it is a reality and as a scrum master, you have to deal with it. It is absolutely important to draw patterns from the spillover to identify the root causes and apply the findings to future sprints to avoid its re-occurrence.

Causes of Spillover

Before diving into ways to avoid spillovers, it’s good to know what are the potential causes of this unfinished work. I have compiled a list of the main categories where majority of unfinished work fall into:

• Team overestimated what they could complete in one iteration.
• Team underestimated one or more of the user stories.
• One or more User story became blocked and could not be completed.
• Lack of communication and collaboration between team members.
• Unanticipated circumstances happened: A team member fell sick, unanticipated support work popped up, natural disaster, etc…
• The Definition of Done wasn’t accurate, and you figured that out too late.

Dealing with spillover

Understanding the root cause of the spillover is the first action to take. The team should use the iteration retrospective to evaluate the cause of the delay and learn from it. Multiple steps could be taken to resolve the spillover, depending on the root cause:

• Increase the time spent on sprint planning: Too often team does not spend enough time planning for the iteration resulting in underestimated or over estimated user stories. Team should spend adequate time with product owner discussing every user story ensuring proper understanding of the objective, the acceptance criteria, and the definition of done. The product owner and technical leaders must also analyze spilled-over stories to identify contributing factors and help the Scrum Team address them
• Calculate team Capacity: This is one of the most neglected step in Sprint planning. The team needs to always review its capacity in light of the previous iteration and adjust its capacity accordingly. Support work might increase from an iteration to another. Holidays, Personal time off are other factors to consider, in addition to weather and climate change.
• Improve Communication: Promoting collaboration and focused communication among the team may avoid slippage. Sometimes technical team tend to linger around a story for a long time without seeking help or assistance from team members. Proper access to Product owner to clarify requirements and definition of done is also pivotal to avoid slippage.

It’s OK to have spillover when there is a situation that cannot be anticipated even after proper planning. But frequent occurrence of spillovers is a pattern for concern. The Scrum Master, along with stakeholders, plays a leading role to make the necessary adjustments. Spillover might not be completely eliminated from your projects. But with proper management and planning, you can reduce the number of times it may occur and be able to reduce its impact.

What do you think?

Have you experienced spillover on your project recently? How often? and what have you done to prevent it from happening again? I would like to hear from you so please share your thoughts in the comments below.