https://www.flickr.com/photos/nickraider/37001311161
By Oliver Holzbauer (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/legalcode), via Flickr

We’ve all been there.  It’s three days to the end of the sprint and suddenly the business decides that the world will END unless a brand-new feature (that they just hatched) is implemented immediately … if not sooner.  Are you done yet?  How about now?

Being a good and faithful Agile scrumling, the Scrum Master tells the Product Owner that this awe-inspiring new feature “will need to go into the next sprint.” 

Uh-hmm…

You can imagine that this is met with a reaction that would melt most inexperienced Scrum Masters and send their shiny little sprint spiraling off into the abyss. 

You can’t blame the Product Owner either.  These poor souls have the entire business clawing at them daily about everything from bug fixes to wanting new features to wondering why the color of this button is grey and not chartreuse.  The Product Owner is worried that missing deployment dates or not having enough “WOW” factor in each release will put a stranglehold on future budgets – not to mention their own career prospects.  What this person doesn’t want to deal with is a Scrum Master who seems to be pedantically obsessed with priorities and deadlines and doesn’t seem to want to just get moving on what’s important right now!!!!!

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