True, bleed-over is not "normal", but I'd bet it's common. It's a sign that you're not doing scrum "properly". My own elevator pitch for kanban to other teams s

True, bleed-over is not "normal", but I'd bet it's common. It's a sign that you're not doing scrum "properly". My own elevator pitch for kanban to other teams still in the scrum world is: if you're not having problems, then don't switch, but if you're having problems (some of which include bleed-over, some of which include long meetings) give kanban a shot. Some teams have switched back after trying kanban, too, it's not for every team anymore than any other process or tool is. You could also say to switch up what scrum means if you're having trouble -- to be honest I've never considered the idea of just ending the sprint early (and rescheduling the sprint planning meeting!), I'm skeptical than any of the "Certified Scrum Masters" I know have either... But it still can't be done if you are finished early but the rest of the team isn't. My team didn't really have a problem with taking on work assigned to someone else so long as that work wasn't started yet, but things get tricky when all the work assigned has been started by someone. A solution in that case does present itself besides just bringing in something new, it's the same solution as kanban when the buckets are full: join another developer on their story and pair (doesn't have to be "formal" pairing even) to get it done faster. But you've highlighted another problem with the whole mess, that being ownership accountability. Lack of visibility outside of the standup meeting into what Dev B is working on when they're paring with Dev A (who is the sole "assigned dev" in the tracking system) is an obstacle to incentivizing pairing. Sometimes you need that visibility. On an old team I left because of terrible management, there were just two of us devs at one point. One sprint it turned out that my face was on the dev column for almost all the items, the sprint before it was my coworker's face, in reality we paired on almost everything. But that second week my manager (who never joined our standups) asked "What are your thoughts about Dev A's work performance? You seem to be doing everything right now." Management memory was sprint-to-sprint. This isn't a problem with scrum, of course, though it does enable that problem to surface where at least in a kanban style you'd have the giant column of closed things having a mix of faces.