SA-01
Issue Completed Outside Any Sprint
Sprint Anomalies
Default severity: medium
ProcessMetricsQuality
What it detects
An issue was resolved without ever being assigned to a sprint — it was completed as unplanned, off-sprint work. These items are invisible to velocity, sprint planning, and retrospectives. High volume of sprint-free completions indicates the team is doing significant shadow work that the process does not track. Measured across issue count, SP, time spent, and BV. sprint_free_done = issues WHERE status IN config.workflow.done_statuses AND sprint IS NULL OR sprint field was never set AND issue.created_at > config.sa.min_tracking_date // exclude pre-agile legacy
Detection formula
IF COUNT(sprint_free_done) / total_done > config.sa.sprint_free_pct_threshold // default: 15% THEN FLAG IF > config.sa.critical_sprint_free_pct // default: 30% THEN CRITICAL Report: issue list + SP + hours_logged + BV — sorted by time_spent desc (largest invisible effort first)Examples in practice
- A team shows an issue was resolved without ever being assigned to a sprint while sprint free pct threshold is set to 15%.
- Example signal: An issue was resolved without ever being assigned to a sprint — it was completed as unplanned, off-sprint work.
Suggested response
Keep sprint boundaries honest—resolve, replan, or flag anomalies instead of hiding them.
Coaching playbook
Symptom
An issue was resolved without ever being assigned to a sprint — it was completed as unplanned, off-sprint work. These items are invisible to velocity, sprint planning, and retrospectives. High volume of sprint-free completions indicates the team is doing significant shadow work that the process does not track. Measured across issue count, SP, time spent, and BV. sprint_free_done = issues WHERE status IN config.workflow.done_statuses AND sprint IS NULL OR sprint field was never set AND issue.created_at > config.sa.min_tracking_date // exclude pre-agile legacy
Why it matters
When "Issue Completed Outside Any Sprint" keeps appearing, the team is signalling a repeatable process gap. Left unexamined, the pattern hides where work really stalls and makes improvement metrics harder to trust.
What you can achieve
Keep sprint boundaries honest—resolve, replan, or flag anomalies instead of hiding them.
Facilitation questions
- What system change would stop "Issue Completed Outside Any Sprint" from firing again?
- What do the cited issues have in common — same root cause or same workaround?
- Who owns the two-week experiment and how will we verify on the next import?
Run this rule against your own tracker data with Flow Analyzer.