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I'd like for the community to help me resolve a disagreement I have with a team mate about moving tasks on the sprint board from "In Progress" to "Done."

Does one need to reduce the remaining hours to zero before moving the task to "Done"? Or is it recommended to keep the hour estimate on each task as it is, before moving the card over to the right?

A quick demo of both approaches: https://share.getcloudapp.com/nOuN42y8

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jonrsharpe
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Vasily Myazin
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  • Why do you need SO to weigh in, rather than talking through what you're trying to achieve with your team? What value do you get from tracking this? – jonrsharpe Mar 26 '20 at 20:53
  • hum, I would keep the hours estimate and also document hours actually spent instead. and if the remaining hours is some number that has to be manually changed then keep it, as it is the equivalent of hours spent. that way in the future if you want to go back and optimize your workflow and estimates you got some data to work with. and if it is done hours remaining is zero kind of thing is easy enough to remember in the head, also it's a bit redundant. key thing is don't loss information. changing numbers to 0 will loss some data. – Aiden Zhao Mar 26 '20 at 21:53
  • @jonrsharpe My colleague and I couldn't come to an agreement. I'm on the side of not reducing the "remaining hours" (also serving as time estimate, in my mind), he's persists with changing to 0 whatever hours were set. I'm asking this question to see if there is a common approach to this. – Vasily Myazin Mar 27 '20 at 01:31
  • @YongkangZhao Thanks for your answer, I'm with you on all counts. Losing information about time spent on tasks is an especially good point. – Vasily Myazin Mar 27 '20 at 01:33
  • It's officially recommended that `Remaining Work should always reflect exactly how much work the team member estimates is remaining to complete the task.` – LoLance Mar 31 '20 at 10:45

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Does one need to reduce the remaining hours to zero before moving the task to "Done"? Or is it recommended to keep the hour estimate on each task as it is, before moving the card over to the right?

Just personal opinion, I think one member should reduce the remaining hours to zero before moving the task to "Done" if the task is really done!

Please check Update remaining work:

Updating Remaining Work, preferably prior to the daily Scrum meeting, helps the team stay informed of the progress being made. It also ensures a smoother burndown chart.

Each team member can review the tasks they've worked on and estimate the work remaining. If they've discovered that it's taking longer than expected to complete, they should increase the remaining work for the task. Remaining Work should always reflect exactly how much work the team member estimates is remaining to complete the task.

So it's officially recommended to update the work remaining if the work is nearly done. Then the Team manager can manage members' work load accurately!

LoLance
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