During sprint planning, your development team is struggling to break down a large user story estimated at 21 story points. The Product Owner insists this story must be completed in the upcoming two-week sprint because it's critical for an upcoming trade show demonstration. The team expresses concern that they typically complete 25-30 story points per sprint, but this single story would consume most of their capacity and carries significant technical risk. The story cannot be demonstrated partially. What is the best approach?

Question

Accepted Answer

The correct answer is D. While ideally stories should be decomposed into smaller increments (which would normally be best practice), the scenario explicitly states 'the story cannot be demonstrated partially' and there's a fixed external deadline. In this context, prioritizing the critical story and deferring other work is the most pragmatic solution that respects the team's capacity while meeting the business need (ECO Process Task 3.3 on managing scope and priorities). Option B is the main distractor and would typically be the preferred approach, but the constraint that partial demonstration isn't possible and the imminent deadline make decomposition impractical in this specific situation. The team should focus their entire sprint capacity on this critical deliverable rather than overcommitting (option A) or missing a significant business opportunity (option C). This demonstrates adaptive planning while maintaining sustainable pace.

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