Sprint Termination in Agile is just another way a Product Owner can control what’s being worked on and how much time (and money) is spend on it. Sprint Termination can happen when a Product Owner decides that the current Sprint is not worth it. This could be for different reasons:
- Requirements have changed
- The backlog items are not important enough and take much more time than expected
- A new Critical Issue arises and it will take more than a week to fix
That’s only to list a few. The decision to terminate a Sprint can only come from the Product Owner.
After a Sprint is terminated two events should follow: Sprint Review and Sprint Retrospective. On the Sprint Review, the team can inspect what got done and what didn’t, and what can be re-used from that. In the Retrospective, the Team will discuss what went wrong and how they can avoid it.