Sprint Carry-Over Rate

Every ticket that doesn't get finished in a sprint carries over into the next one — and competes with everything already planned for that sprint. This visual makes that compounding effect visible: how many issues are completing each sprint, and how many are rolling forward to become someone else's problem next time.

A rising carry-over rate across sprints is one of the earliest warning signs of a team that is consistently over-committing. The work doesn't disappear — it just gets pushed forward, sprint after sprint, until the backlog becomes unmanageable.

What you can conclude

• A carry-over rate above 30% is a strong signal that sprint scope is consistently too ambitious — capacity or scope needs to be adjusted.
• A rate that is growing sprint-over-sprint is more concerning than a stable one — it indicates the problem is not being addressed.
• A carry-over rate trending toward zero over multiple sprints is clear evidence that planning discipline is improving — the KPI trend badge shows this direction at a glance.

How this chart works

Stacked bar chart showing per sprint the number of issues completed before sprint close (teal) versus those that carried over (coral). Three KPI badges above the chart show the latest carry-over %, the trend direction, and the number of sprints analyzed. A dashed line on the secondary axis shows the carry-over % per sprint.

A coral warning banner is shown when the latest carry-over % exceeds 30%.

When the sprint name is missing in the source data, the chart falls back to bucketing by sprint start date (e.g. Mar 23, Mar 31) and an amber data-quality banner is shown above the chart to flag the fallback so the bars aren't mistaken for proper sprints.

Use the project and sprint name filters to compare specific sprints or focus on a single team.