Skip to main content

Deadline in Scrum

Last post 05:18 pm May 1, 2023 by Nicholas Gabrichidze
6 replies
08:34 pm April 22, 2023

Deadline in Scrum

At the recent job interview I was asked a question:

"If the team cant meet a deadline, and its certain, what product owner should do?"

I gave the only proper answer "PO should cancel the Scrum, or possibly the whole Scrum"

 

The interviewer was stunned, and said:

"Yes but should not he simply move the incomplete items back into product backlog, and simply move into next Scrum?"

And here I had to educate my own job interviewer about us importance of proper terminology in Agile/Scrum

"Scrum team doesn't have deadlines,

The Sprint goal is an estimate which Scrum team makes , and is not a deadline of any kind-if definition of done is not met when Sprint expires, the team moves incomplete items back into Product backlog and, addresses it at the next retrospective. Its a regular working process of transparency, inspection and adaptation, team learns from it. Its a source of better velocity and productivity for next sprint and good control mechanism to reduce risk..."

However it does not mean "deadline" doesn't exist AT ALL in Scrum project.

The Organization who is sponsoring the Scrum may have its own contracts with clients, disregard PO's best efforts in EBM, and if such contract has a deadline, not meeting it will make product obsolete-which means it should be cancelled by PO.

Any opinions?


02:33 am April 23, 2023

 

As an Agile transformation consultant, I completely agree with your response to the interviewer. Scrum does not have specific deadlines but has a time-bound iteration called a Sprint. It is the responsibility of the Development Team to meet the Sprint Goal, and if the team cannot complete it, the incomplete items move back to the Product Backlog.

The Product Owner manages the Product Backlog and prioritizes it based on the stakeholders' requirements. The PO should work closely with the Development Team to ensure that the backlog items are well-defined, achievable, and meet the objectives.

In some cases, external deadlines may exist, such as contract obligations or market demands. In such a scenario, the PO should work with the Development Team to ensure that the specific deadline can be met. Still, they should ensure that the team does not compromise on the quality of the product or their technical standards.

The main goal of Scrum is to promote transparency, inspection, and adaption. Thus, setting unrealistic or arbitrary deadlines may harm the development process and ultimately negatively impact the product's quality or outcome.


12:31 am April 24, 2023

If it is obvious that the goal cannot be reached in the form it was planned for sprint, you should communicate to the team to re-think/re-scope the current sprint plan and current sprint goal to at least reach some clear result in a direction of the goal. In short, you should scope the goal to be more achievable. Cancelling the sprint in this case would be a mistake that would lead to unpleasant situation for all involved parties. "We realised that we cannot reach goal A by the end of the sprint, so we have re-scoped it to goal B that still allows us to start beta-testing and helps achieve A in the next sprint." is much better than "we realised that we cannot reach goal A, so we have cancelled our sprint and we are all in a very awkward situation now".

Now, about time-bound projects. Even in Scrum, we regularly face the case when time is a major requirement. You can pretty much treat this as a critical non-functional requirement for a feature - "deliver by ...". This is especially true for changes in laws (like GDPR a few years ago) or changes in third party services (like GA4 API update recently).

Product owner's responsibility is to solve users needs, not to implement the specific solution that that is provided to product owner by the client. Is it valid for a client to ask product owner to cover need A by date B? Yes, absolutely. The role of product owner here would be to find a balanced solution that covers client's need still allowing to cover it by required date.

And if requirements are delivered to you as a complete solution - you are not actually a product owner.


09:11 am April 24, 2023

"If it is obvious that the goal cannot be reached in the form it was planned for sprint, you should communicate to the team to re-think/re-scope the current sprint plan and current sprint goal to at least reach some clear result in a direction of the goal. In short, you should scope the goal to be more achievable."

 

Actually its the team who should do it, not the Scrum master alone.

There is no requirement "to reach some result"

First of all "some result" does not count in Scrum. Either there is a increment or not; and if not the incomplete items go back to product backlog and issue is addressed at next retrospective. As simple as that.


09:25 am April 24, 2023

Let me elaborate again. The situation when the team cant or does not meet definition of done of fails to deliver increment is not called "not meeting the deadline", because expiration of Sprint isn't deadine of any kind.

That's regular situation in Scrum, helping team to learn scoping velocity better and reducing long term  risks.

This situation is called "being not able to meet the sprint goal" or "not being able to make increment by the end of the Scrum.

Choice of words is very important thing, and Scrum framework particularly focuses on it, emathasing that if the proper vocabulary and terminology will not be used while running Scrum project, it may harm whole outcome.

My interviewer choose the word "deadline"

Eventually only thing in Scrum which can be considered "deadline" is an external deadline-either the bounding contract obligation of the Organization-the firm who has hired the Scrum team to deliver the product the client at certain date, without a possibility of prolongation, or market situation which dictates release of the product towards certain date.

Not meeting this deadline will make product obsolete because it's market value will be lost-which eventually means expiation of the product, and cancellation of scrum by Product owner.

In this event Scrum team should report its readiness for new product to the Organization, or re enter the labor market for new jobs if organization does not need or does not want to finance their services any longer


09:31 am April 24, 2023

"Product owner's responsibility is to solve users needs, not to implement the specific solution that that is provided to product owner by the client. Is it valid for a client to ask product owner to cover need A by date B? Yes, absolutely. The role of product owner here would be to find a balanced solution that covers client's need still allowing to cover it by required date."

This is a right description of PO work, and good example of PO doing his work well.

But this situation is not called "not meeting deadline". In short it can be described "PO is negotiating new deal to extend the deadline an delivery condition for mutual benefit"

I was asked what PO should do if "team cant meet the deadline and everyone is certain about it"-sharp.

Considering that word "deadline" has quite straightforward meaning, there are no buts, ifs, of whys about it: it means if team does not meet deadline the whole Product loses its value to zero(why does this happen is another story-it can be market situation contract obligation or changes in laws, like you mentioned). And once product loses value to zero(disregard what work was done by the team, and how good it was) it ceases existing, making whole Scrum pointless.


05:18 pm May 1, 2023

Scrum is THE PART of Agile. Discussing difference is not logical.  It's like discussing difference between the hand and the whole body.

Yes the hand is certainly NOT the body, but it is not some independent thing or matter either


By posting on our forums you are agreeing to our Terms of Use.

Please note that the first and last name from your Scrum.org member profile will be displayed next to any topic or comment you post on the forums. For privacy concerns, we cannot allow you to post email addresses. All user-submitted content on our Forums may be subject to deletion if it is found to be in violation of our Terms of Use. Scrum.org does not endorse user-submitted content or the content of links to any third-party websites.

Terms of Use

Scrum.org may, at its discretion, remove any post that it deems unsuitable for these forums. Unsuitable post content includes, but is not limited to, Scrum.org Professional-level assessment questions and answers, profanity, insults, racism or sexually explicit content. Using our forum as a platform for the marketing and solicitation of products or services is also prohibited. Forum members who post content deemed unsuitable by Scrum.org may have their access revoked at any time, without warning. Scrum.org may, but is not obliged to, monitor submissions.