Scrum and Deadlines: What Holds a Team Together as It Breaks
summary
Discusses handling fixed deadlines in Scrum by using Why-first transparency and an explicit inspect-and-adapt question: “can we meet this deadline?” Uses a concrete math example (11 PBIs, 2 per sprint, deadline in sprint 3) to show finishing all is impossible and presents three real choices—trim scope, add people (with Brooks’ Law caveat), or cut quality. Recommends prioritizing time over scope, preserving quality, limiting WIP, scheduling a post-release debt-repayment sprint, and gives case studies (including pausing four sprints to help another team and later automating leftover work) that kept deadlines while maintaining team cohesion.
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chapters (14)
- 0:00Introduction
- 1:07Deadline definition
- 5:20Scrum basics
- 6:26Deadline meets Scrum
- 12:26Deadline importance
- 14:53Scope adjustment
- 16:59Brooks' Law limits
- 22:19Multiple deadlines
- 28:45Scrum events
- 31:13Team autonomy
- 36:13Predictable cycles
- 36:54Navigation app case
- 40:05HealthTech case
- 44:41Key takeaways
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