A common issue among Scrum teams arises when teams consider what to do with stories which are pulled during the sprint but not completed. What do you do with these stories? Should you consider them failed? Should you ignore them and simply continue to work on them in the following sprint? Should you re-estimate them? Should you give partial credit? Maybe they shouldn’t have been started at all? I have tried all of the above and in my experience one particular strategy has shown itself to be more valuable than the others.

First, let’s examine some different approaches.

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Through my years at various companies, I have taken part in, and led, many different efforts at organizing a large team or department around a large – usually enormous – backlog. Things like SAFe, LeSS, and other methodologies try to codify this, providing patterns and best practices to tackle this challenge head on. My personal experience is that, while these methodologies help somewhat, they all still feel like something is missing.

In the past, I have often wondered if it can be done much more simply. The recent focus on #noestimates has reawakened my musings, and inspired me to write a bit about them. What if, instead of trying to play a min-max game with your team members, you simply tackle your backlog one item at a time, regardless of the size of your development team?

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