An Executive walks into a Daily Scrum

So an Executive walks into a Daily Scrum and demands Team Member X who must immediately begin work on something that is not part of the Scrum Team’s commitment for the Sprint.

If you are a Scrum Master, this has either happened to you, or it is going to… soon.

What do you do? 

You know this is not ok. The Executive, who may have the power to fired you on the spot. should know better too, but apparently, they are “extra-agile”.

Your job is to protect the team from interruptions just like this. But your job is also not to get fired. In the heat of this moment, you may not have time to work on developing and evaluating different theories.

What do you do?

In this episode of SoundNotes, Vic Bonacci joins me to talk through some of the options a Scrum Master has in this situation. We explore different choices available to the SM and the potential impact of each option. And, Vic and I both came at this challenge from different angles, so it gave us an excellent opportunity to talk through how we see it through different lenses.