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Original scientific article

AGENT-BASED SPRINT MITIGATION FOR RISK-RESILIENT SCRUM EXECUTION: A CONTROLLED SIMULATION STUDY

By
V. Sunder Orcid logo ,
V. Sunder

Associate Professor, Department of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, Ahalia School of Engineering and Technology, Palakkad, Kerala, India

Dr.P. Deepalakshmi Orcid logo
Dr.P. Deepalakshmi
Contact Dr.P. Deepalakshmi

Professor, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Kalasalingam Academy of Research and Education, Krishnankoil, Tamil Nadu, India

Abstract

The Scrum framework is one of the most popular Agile software development frameworks, due to its versatility, iterative development process, and focus on delivering value in small increments. However, sprint overruns continue to be a significant operational challenge and are usually caused by changes in requirements, misjudging the effort, blocker events, or productivity swings. Scrum monitoring methods currently used are mostly related to progress tracking and predictive analytics, offering little assistance in the proactive aspect when the sprint runs. This study presents a lightweight Rule-Based Agentic Mitigation Framework that actively observes deviations in sprint execution and takes pre-defined corrective actions if execution risk is above defined thresholds. The proposed framework is not dependent on large historical databases or complex computational infrastructure, as is the case for machine learning-based approaches, thus enabling the use of the framework in various Agile environments. To assess the effectiveness of the proposed framework, an experimental simulation was used. All 200 paired sprint simulations were performed under identical conditions of scope changes, blocker occurrences, and velocity variability. The following metrics were used to evaluate the performance: Sprint Overrun Rate, Sprint Success Rate, Average Risk Detection Day, and Execution Stability Index. The results of the experiments showed that the proposed framework improved the Sprint Overrun Rate from 0.830 to 0.625, which is an improvement of 24.7%. The Sprint Success Rate went from 17.0% to 37.5%, and Average Risk Detection Day went from Day 5.34 to Day 3.19, allowing earlier corrective action. Additionally, the Index of Execution Stability rose from 0.78 to 0.92, which means there was greater consistency in sprint progress. In the ablation study, it was confirmed that the totality of the velocity correction, scope adjustment, and ambiguity reduction resulted in improvement of the performance. The results indicate that agentic mitigation by rules is an effective and practical solution to increase the reliability of sprints, decrease overruns, and improve Agile project governance.

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Citation

This is an open access article distributed under the  Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (CC BY-NC) License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. 

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Issue 36, 2026
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