Length of sprint
I want a help from professionals and practicioners for following question.
A team is working on product, and now n'th sprints goes on. From the beginning, length of Sprint defined 2weeks and the team knows already its capacity, so almost in each sprint Development Team prepares a potential releasable increment.
Parlelly, PO works on Product Backlog, so finds the wahs how to maximize the value which will lead to Organization earns money. So Product owner shows high productability in terms of Business value.
At one point an opportunity work occurs for PO (Bingo!)
Product owner finds a very big impactable negotiation with external company which they are ready to give logs of money if that if they get what they want in 21days. Everyone in Scrum team know this task is reachabke. But this work is urgent and there is a deadline which expires after 21 days. If Scrum Team could not release the product, the chance will lost, and will not be able to gain lots of money.
In Sprint planning Development Team estimates that this work can be done in 21 days, and can immediately released after 21days. But for the first sprint(as mentioned above that, regular sprint length is 14days) nothing to show as increment, because this work is a whole, impossible to decompose for 2 weeks. and In the first 14 days there will be some architectural backend tasks will be ready, so there will be nothing to demonstrate as 2 weeks sprint. So if PO wants to see something as increment, PO should wait 21 days.
Questuon : What can be as increment for first sprint? Its ok to start sprint as planning not necessery demonstratable increment will be done during sprint? and only inthe middle of the next sprint increment can be done.
In the first 14 days there will be some architectural backend tasks will be ready, so there will be nothing to demonstrate as 2 weeks sprint.
Why not? Don’t the team intend to validate the increment? Wouldn’t they wish to demonstrate it can support a valuable usage scenario, however small it may be?
I don't understand why it would day 21 days to do architectural work only and have nothing user visible to show and then 7 days later have something that is so immensely valuable. It seems like there should be a way to reorder the work in such a way that something can be done to demonstrate an understanding of the problem and ensure that the set of work will be useful and valuable to the customer and users.
I'd also point out that there needs to be a potentially releasable Increment at the end of the Sprint, but Scrum doesn't say anything about creating a potentially releasable ("Done") Increment before the end of the Sprint. It also doesn't say when you release an Increment - you could do this in the middle of a Sprint, as well. So the fact that your deadline would be in the middle of a Sprint has very little to do with your Sprint cadence.
I'm going to play the other side on this one....
I'd argue that Scrum may not even be the best approach if you only have 21 days and one shot to achieve value or the compensation and opportunity is lost.
Is it worth incurring the overhead that an inspect and adapt process would have? It may be best to plan thoroughly and work to meet this date.