Fixing Your Scrum

The Product Owner as Judge

Here’s a scenario we’ve seen many times and one that, as you may recall, occurred in the nonprofit example at the beginning of this chapter:

To prepare for each sprint review, the Scrum master and development team create an agenda to explain to the product owner what the team accomplished during the sprint. During the sprint review, the development team goes through each item, and the product owner approves or rejects the items for completeness. Regardless of whether any stakeholders are present, this process of acceptance or rejection is often the cause of much strife and angst for the development team.

The sprint ...