“Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”

As a developer on the losing end of an over-committed (and sometimes lazy) product owner, I dislike placeholders because they have a way of finding their way into a sprint. So I would lean toward option #1.

Of course our lives would all be MUCH easier if we could plan everything in advance…!

In reality, this is not always possible – particularly if your Scrum team is also your BAU team.

I’ve written quite a few posts on this subject (see below).

1) Lean, Scrum, Scrum of Scrums and Epic Boards

2) Minimising the Impact of Sprint Disruptions

3) Managing Scrum Projects alongside BAU