tracking items that slip from the sprint

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Hi JD,

Have you had a look at the Cycle Time Report in Web Reports yet? It might be a bit higher level then what you are looking for, but I think it was built to address this question.

There is another more cumbersome trick that I sometimes suggest. It goes a bit like this:

When an item slips you make a copy of it. Opening up the backlog item and hitting ctrl alt n will do it for you fairly easily.

Don't Estimate this Item.

I usually name it something like COPY - Title

Move the Tasks from your Unfinished item to this copy.

Copy those Tasks to your Unfinished item.

Tag the Unfinished item with a theme, maybe something like Unfinished.

Move your unfinished item to the appropriate location (another sprint or back to the backlog)

This is a few more steps then I would like it to be but what it will do is accomplish this:

All of your task history will be preserved in the sprint they were worked on, everything that matters in the tasks will be moved over to the new sprint with the original item.

Since the copy has no estimate associated with it, it will not reflect on reporting. However it is still there to show you what occurred during the sprint.

Since the unfinished item is tagged with the unfinished team you can run reports or filter your backlog using that theme (or even make it into an epic for another layer of reporting).

Ultimately I would like to see this as a built in feature to ScrumWorks, and we have PBIs for it. Given the current roadmap however I'm guessing it will be some time next year that this can be a built in feature.

If you need any clarification let me know. I might not be able to respond until next week however. I am currently on the road.