Midway through a product launch, a major supplier announces a three-week shutdown due to a...

The supplier shutdown is a realized external dependency that blocks only the hardware needed for integration testing. The project manager should preserve delivery momentum by working with the product owner and team to reorder the backlog around valuable work that is not affected by the outage. This is preferable to pausing the entire sprint, which would stop productive work, or immediately replacing the vendor without assessing contractual, technical, and lead-time consequences. Requesting additional funding also does not directly remove the constraint. Reprioritization is an adaptive response that protects value delivery while the team evaluates the supplier’s recovery date, updates the risk and issue records, assesses schedule impacts, and prepares contingency actions for the blocked integration work. Scrum places accountability for ordering backlog work with the product owner.

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