Scrum Anti-Patterns: Mandatory Story Completion And The Struggling Team
The Core Problem of Mandatory Story Completion
Excessive pressure on the software development team to complete user stories within a sprint can lead to major problems. Rigid mandates to finish all committed stories lack flexibility and inevitably cause technical debt, quality issues, and team member burnout.
Agile frameworks like Scrum emphasize working software over comprehensive documentation. While some velocity in delivering new features is beneficial, mandated completion quotas often have the opposite effect.
Excessive Pressure on the Team to Complete Stories
When product owners, scrum masters, or managers demand that 100% of committed user stories make it to “done” at the end of each sprint, anxiety among the engineers is sure to follow. These types of directives imply that missing the marksignals failure.
Developers may end up working excessive hours to meet checkpoints for the sole purpose of compliance. The natural ebb and flow of coding complex software, where some elements take longer than expected, gets suppressed. Institutional bureaucracy prevails over common sense.
Lack of Flexibility Leads to Technical Debt and Quality Issues
Strict story completion rules within sprints leave no breathing room. But uncertainty lurks in every project. When unforeseen dependencies surface mid-sprint or obstacles outside the team’s control block progress, mandatory due dates back developers into a corner.
Cutting corners to deliver promised functionality becomes the team’s only perceived choice. Quick fixes get prioritized over robust, scalable solutions. The heightened pressure of looming deadlines leaves no time for refactoring existing code. The result is a gradual decline in overall system quality and architectural integrity, not to mention morale.
Why Teams Struggle with Mandatory Completion
Several factors contribute to a team missing mandated completion targets within a sprint.
Unanticipated Technical Dependencies and Blockers
Unknown dependencies often don’t surface until development is underway. For example, changing a fundamental database schema or API endpoint upon which many components rely can trigger unintended breakages elsewhere.
Such unforeseen tokens force difficult choices around do we preserve completeness or correctness? When technical debt already burdens the codebase, teams find themselves stuck playing whack-a-mole to satisfy rigid delivery deadlines.
Inherent Uncertainty in Estimating Complex Tasks
Even seasoned software engineers struggle to accurately size out long-term endeavors. Too many variables exist around shifting priorities, tools, compatibility issues, and upstream delays. What looks straightforward during sprint planning can unveil layers of complexity not immediately obvious.
For example, upgrading to a newer third-party library can necessitate rewriting integration points thought stable. Such unknowns make it nearly impossible to guarantee completion timetables despite concerted efforts.
Pressure Leads to Lower Quality and Rushed Work
As the due date for unfinished tasks loom, developers feel forced into hasty decisions that violate normal quality safeguards. Essential activities like testing, documentation, and refactoring get truncated or skipped altogether.
Valuable feedback from peers on intermediate work also suffers due to the mad dash to complete something – anything – before the sprint closure. Such dynamics sabotage the “potentially shippable” purpose of each increment.
Consequences of Rigid Mandatory Completion
Several negative consequences emerge when executives, product owners, or scrum masters refuse to relax mandated story completion quotas.
Technical Debt Accumulation
As mentioned earlier, enforced due dates suppress normal quality protocols like peer code reviews, refactoring algorithms, expanding test coverage, and fixing defects. The unresolved flaws get passed downstream as legacy issues the team must pay back later at higher interest rates.
Constantly working under pressure leads to patchwork solutions rather than thoughtful design enhancements. The result is a gradual decline in overall system integrity and reliability as technical debt accumulates.
Lower Team Morale and Member Burnout
Few realities induce more workplace stress than impossible expectations with no flexibility. Being micromanaged into rigid story completion sprints despite legitimate obstacles breeds hostility and a culture of fear.
Developers anxiety spikes when repeatedly forced to cut corners knowing the architectural erosion impacts downstream efforts later. Talented personnel seek saner working conditions leading to costly churn.
Higher Defect Rates Due to Compressed Testing
When mandated deadlines pressure teams to reduce testing early warning signals get missed. Code thrown over the wall untested leads towards higher production incident rates. Defects that make it to customers then erode user confidence and satisfaction in the product.
Band-aid hot fixes during crunch time will likely introduce regressions that further decay system stability. These dynamics negatively reinforce themselves.
Balancing Completion and Sustainability
Some relatively simple changes by leadership can balance the need for consistent story delivery and team sustainability.
Allow Spill Over of Incomplete Work into the Next Sprint
Rather than crack the whip harder on engineers to finish specs during the current sprint, allow a mechanism for seamlessly pushing the unfinished stories into the next iteration.
Set the expectation that initial estimates will likely miss targets so just roll work forward when that happens. Eliminate the notion of failure around missing arbitrary completion deadlines.
Emphasize Delivering Value Over Mandated Completion
Acknowledge that if fundamental dependencies shift or new complexities emerge that existing estimates become obsolete. Ruthlessly forcing completion in these cases rarely optimizes for customer value.
Trust the team has valid reasons for adjusting plans as more learns. The key question becomes: What minimal set of scope delivers the most immediate value given the new reality?
Empower Teams to Push Back on Unrealistic Demands
Ensure team members have psychological safety to voice constraints and propose alternative solutions when rigid delivery mandates falter. Break down old command-and-control hierarchies that fuel anxiety.
Favor more incremental validation cycles over trying to define distant multi-month targets with certainty at the outset. Smaller batches limit risk exposure to missed forecasts.
Example User Story Code Showing Flexible Due Dates
public class UserStory {
private String name;
private String description;
private Date initialDueDate;
private Date revisedDueDate;
public UserStory(String name, String description, Date initialDueDate) {
this.name = name;
this.description = description;
this.initialDueDate = initialDueDate;
}
public void setRevisedDueDate(Date revisedDueDate) {
this.revisedDueDate = revisedDueDate;
}
public Date getInitialDueDate() {
return initialDueDate;
}
public Date getRevisedDueDate() {
return revisedDueDate;
}
}
Key Takeaways and Best Practices
Mandating 100% user story completion every sprint often backfires by accumulating technical debt and driving team burnout. Allow stories to spill across iterations when reasonable. Trust developers not arbitrary due dates. Empower teams to revise estimates as complexities emerge.
