Is it ok to close sprint a day earlier

[Ashwini Gunjal]

If there is a company official holiday on last day of sprint so is it ok to close the sprint a day prior . Or should I wait till the office reopens again and close the sprint and start new one (which could be days later). Please suggest what could get impacted and what is general way of doing it

[Walter Buggenhout]

Hi @Ashwini Gunjal,

I think a pragmatic approach is in order. The goal of sprints is to create focus on the work your team is doing by committing to a small(er) number of work items across a short period of time. 

Reports (like the sprint report or the velocity chart) tell you how the sprint went and provide you with information to improve on your future commitment and build trust with your stakeholders to what you and your team can deliver.

If you have a holiday and you are not working on a certain day, that means you are not progressing any work anyway. So there is no reason at all why you should keep yourself from closing the sprint a day earlier (or later, for that matter).

That your sprint is a day shorter compared to other sprints, may show in the number of issues / story points your team delivers, but that is something you should mainly be able to explain from the fact that you had less capacity.

So, no worries! It's only a sprint 😉

Hope this helps! 

[Jack Brickey]

Adding to what Walter has already conveyed what I typically do regarding holidays is to incorporate that into the planning session before I start the sprint. So if the sprint is to end on a holiday I would plan for it to either end the day before or the day after.