During a sprint, should we try to achieve 100% user story completion or 100% productivity?

Question

We know that during every sprint, the team's primary goal is to achieve 100% completion of user stories which are part of the sprint backlog. But what happens in practice is that, development should be completed 2-3 days prior to sprint end, so that ample time can be spent to complete testing tasks. Now, due to pressure of completing all user stories, the team can't pull another one since they know they will not able to complete it. Which means, either developers have to analyze next sprint tasks (which still may leave some spare time) or have to sit idle.Some people may argue that planning was not good. But aren't we following Agile, where estimates may vary from actual (which leads to carry over of user stories) or maybe the scrum team completes all user stories in less time as compared to original plan.Suppose the team is pulling another user story and didn't complete it. There is argument, it doesn't look good from management perspective that user stories are getting carried over.Isn't the pressure of completing all user stories, which are pulled in a sprint, somehow decreasing the productivity of the team?

Answer 1

In Agile, it’s expected that estimates won’t always match reality. Sometimes teams finish all stories early, and other times they carry some over. Story carry-over isn’t a failure—it’s part of the learning process that helps improve future planning and velocity.

Developers shouldn’t be “forced” to stay busy by pulling risky stories at the end of a sprint just to avoid spillover. Instead, when development finishes early, the team can support testing, handle bugs, refine the backlog, improve automation, or work on tech debt. These activities strengthen the team and help future sprints run smoothly.

The real productivity issue comes from pressure to hit 100% of the sprint plan every time. When teams feel they must avoid spillover at all costs, they become overly cautious and stop working naturally. Agile values transparency and adaptability, not perfection. Occasional spillover is normal, and the focus should be on delivering quality work—not meeting an artificial “everything must be done” metric.