Ace the 2025 CSPO Challenge – Unleash Your Scrum Mastery!

A first Sprint can indeed start before the Product Owner has a complete Product Backlog in place. In Scrum, the emphasis is on delivering value incrementally and iteratively, rather than on having a fully detailed and complete product backlog prior to the start of work.

The Scrum framework encourages teams to begin work as soon as they have a preliminary backlog with enough items defined to start delivering value. The Product Owner plays a crucial role in maintaining and refining the Product Backlog throughout the project. This ongoing prioritization and refinement process allows the team to adapt and respond to changes in requirements, market conditions, or stakeholder feedback during subsequent Sprints.

Furthermore, it's perfectly acceptable for the initial backlog to contain only a few essential items, and even more can be added or refined as the project progresses. This flexibility is one of the strengths of the Scrum methodology as it enables teams to react to new insights and evolving needs more effectively.

Therefore, jumping into the first Sprint without a complete backlog is not only permissible but aligns with the agile principles of flexibility and adaptive planning.