You probably noticed that during summer vacations, items don’t fly to that ‘done’ column. In most cases, this is due to the absence of people. Not only the development team but also Product Owners take a vacation too.
This might directly lead to more blocking issues. *yikes*.
It’s good to recognize this during the retrospective and to measure the team’s velocity even during these periods. Keep in mind that a drop or increase in the team’s velocity is not bad perse.
You need to understand the why. Did we do something different during estimations, is it a holiday period, … ?
Sometimes I get the question if it’s not a better option to just stop the iteration or just extend/shorten it, just work on minor bugs or administrative tasks that always get postponed, etc…
My answer would be: no, don’t stop iterating, just plan accordingly. Bugs exist if a part of a story was not completed and therefore the story should not be closed. If the Product Owner forgot to make it part of a story, then I would advise creating another story for this.
Administrative tasks are not something you define as a story or task. It’s a part of the work – similar to having a meeting.