One of the most common problems that teams run into is handling unfinished work. Whether it is defects, scope creep, or technical debt, the team finds itself unable to complete everything it was attempting to do.
Note: UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES IS A TEAM TO EXTEND A SPRINT/TIME BOX’s END DATE
There are 2 options in handling unfinished work:
In this scenario, The user story in its entierty is moved to the following sprint. The work that is completed still remains complete. The advantage of this approach is purely that it is easier than moving, it does however count against the teams velocity.
In this scenario, the team is still able to provide some value to the business with the work that was completed. The Scrum master literally splits the user story into smaller user stories, and moves unfinished work either to a subsequent sprint, or the backlog.
An Epic user story must be created to link the user stories together.
The advantage of this approach is that the team still claims velocity as well as delivering user value. It is however, a more complex process.
Note: Only the Scrum master should perform user story splitting