Hold on Scrum Players, Your Team Still Needs Clarity on Some Game Rules!

Different opinions among Scrum followers sometimes create points of discussion. Recently one such point was, "Who can terminate a sprint?" There were three different opinions, covering all three roles in Scrum (ScrumMaster, product owner, development team). Below are excerpts from Scrum experts that give us insight into the different answers to this question.

In Agile Project Management with Scrum, Ken Schwaber says, "If the Sprint proves to be not viable, the ScrumMaster can abnormally terminate the Sprint and initiate a new Sprint planning meeting to initiate the next Sprint. The ScrumMaster can make this change of his or her own accord or as requested by the Team or the Product Owner."

Kenneth Rubin, in Essential Scrum, writes, "Should the sprint goal become completely invalid, the Scrum team may decide that continuing with the current sprint makes no sense and advise the product owner to abnormally terminate the sprint."

And in Succeeding with Agile, Mike Cohn writes, "Let's consider the case of the product owner discovering some important new requirement that she says needs to be done instead of the work the team is engaged in. Sometimes this will happen. When it does I suggest making the change in sprint goal visible. Scrum does this by having the team announce an abnormal termination to the sprint . . . "

What I want to make clear here, as is made clear in the quotes above, is the importance of context. Without understanding the context of the situation, one should not get carried away with one's own opinion. One must consider the scenario leading to the termination of the sprint. Though sprint termination is rare, sometimes compelling reasons indicate its need. Whatever the case is, due to transparency in Scrum practices, reasons will be visible to all. The Scrum team has to act according to the situation. Sprint termination is not a decision taken without the consensus of the team, and the Scrum team is comprised of all three roles: product owner + ScrumMaster + development team.

Originally published at: https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2015/february/hold-on-scrum-players-your-team-still-need-clarity