No sprint cancellation: The product owner does not cancel a sprint whose sprint goal can no longer be achieved.Lastly, misusing the cancellation privilege also indicates a serious team collaboration issue.) Probably, the team has an idea how to save the sprint. The product owner should also never abort a sprint without consulting the development team first. However, the product owner should not do this lightly without a serious cause.

(It is the prerogative of the product owner to cancel sprints.

Misuse of sprint cancellation: The product owner cancels sprints to impose his or her will onto the team.

This habit puts also reaching the sprint goal at risk.) Otherwise, the product owner will create an artificial queue which will increase the cycle-time. (In the spirit of continuous integration, the product owner should immediately check tasks that meet the acceptance criteria. Instead, he or she waits until the end of the sprint.

Delaying PO: The product owner does not accept sprint backlog items once those are finished.

Blindly following the original plan violates a core scrum principle.) (If the work on a task reveals that the agreed upon acceptance criteria are no longer achievable or waste, the scrum team needs to adapt to the new reality.

Inflexible PO: The product owner is not flexible to adjust acceptance criteria.

If changes become acute during the sprint the team will collaboratively decide on how to handle them.) However, once it moves from one backlog to the other, the development team becomes responsible. (There is a clear line: before a product backlog item turns into a sprint backlog item the product owner is responsible. Or, he or she changes acceptance criteria once the team accepted the issue into the sprint backlog. For example, the product owner increases the scope of a user story.

PO clinging to tasks: The product owner cannot let go product backlog items once they become sprint backlog items.

(That creates a micro-waterfall approach for the duration of the sprint.)

Absent PO: The product owner is absent most of the sprint and is not available to answer questions of the development team.

Sprint Anti-patterns of the Product Owner This list of notorious sprint anti-patterns applies to all scrum roles and beyond: the product owner, the development team, the scrum master, the scrum team, as well as stakeholders and the IT management.

Sprint scrum