Sprint spillover
The Sprint spillover report measures how much work in the current sprint has rolled over from previous sprints. Use this metric to identify stuck tickets, chronic over-commitment, or issues with work estimation.
When to use sprint spillover
Sprint spillover answers the question: How much work is rolling over from the past?
This report helps teams:
- Identify stuck tickets — Spot issues that have been carried across multiple sprints without being completed.
- Detect chronic over-commitment — High spillover may indicate the team is consistently taking on more than it can deliver.
- Improve estimation accuracy — Recurring spillover on certain types of work can reveal estimation blind spots.
How spillover percentage is calculated
The spillover percentage is calculated as:
Spillover work ÷ Total work
Where:
- Spillover work is the story point/issue count for issues that were in a previous sprint before appearing in the current sprint
- Total work is the story point/issue count for all issues in the sprint
An issue counts as spillover if this is not the first sprint the ticket has been attempted in. If a ticket appeared in any prior sprint, it is marked as spillover work. Sprint spillover can be calculated based on either story points or issue counts.
How sprint spillover relates to other sprint metrics
Sprint spillover provides insight into why sprint predictability or sprint completion may be suffering:
- High spillover + low completion — Suggests the team is carrying forward work it cannot close out, creating a compounding backlog.
- High spillover + high volatility — Indicates both old and new work are competing for capacity, putting pressure on the sprint.
- Low spillover — Suggests the team is completing work within its original sprint, indicating healthy throughput and realistic planning.