Don't Leave Old Sprints Open
- Mary Iqbal
- 1 day ago
- 2 min read
In one of my recent Professional Scrum Master classes, a participant shared a frustrating story about a vendor doing software development work. She was struggling to hold them accountable, and they weren’t delivering the value the organization expected.
Sprint after Sprint, a lot of work remained unfinished at the end of the Sprint. Instead of returning that work to the Product Backlog or discussing next steps at the following Sprint Planning event, the vendor simply left the previous Sprint open. At any given time there might be four or five Sprints open for the same Scrum team.
Don’t do this.
When you leave old Sprints open, you break one of the core benefits of Scrum: transparency.
Why Leaving Sprints Open Is a Problem
You lose visibility — It becomes hard to see what’s really happening with that work. Is it blocked? Is the team stuck? Are they quietly working on other work on the side? You can’t tell.
It hides reality — Unfinished work lingering in old Sprints is a subtle (sometimes unintentional) way to mask problems and reduces clarity about what the team is actually working on.
It breaks empiricism — Scrum relies on transparency, inspection, and adaptation. If you can’t clearly see what’s Done and what isn’t, honest inspection and real adaptation become impossible.
It creates technical and business debt — Work that sits half-done for weeks or months gets stale. Context is lost, and the cost of finishing it later almost always goes up.
What You Should Do Instead
At the end of every Sprint:
Be honest about what is Done.
Move unfinished work back to the Product Backlog.
Let the Product Owner re-prioritize it for future Sprints.
Close the Sprint cleanly.
During Sprint Planning, the team pulls in whatever they believe they can get to Done in the new Sprint — based on current priorities and capacity.
This keeps everything visible and forces real conversations about why work isn’t getting Done.
The Hard Truth
Leaving Sprints open is often a symptom of deeper issues — fear of bad news, pressure to look good, or a lack of real accountability.
If you’re a Scrum Master (or a leader), push back on this practice. Insist on closing Sprints. The short-term discomfort of seeing the truth is far better than the long-term pain of hidden problems and false progress.
Transparency isn’t always comfortable, but it’s the only way Scrum actually works.
