What Scrum Master should do if we are in last week of planned Release and Developer goes on unplanned leave?
What do you believe the SM should do in such a situation?
In my view, the Developers in the scrum team should be cross functional and self-managing, so they should decide via consensus if they still have enough capacity to achieve the sprint goal or not, in order to see if they need to start negotiations with the PO or to approach you if they see having one less developer as an impediment.
What do you mean by "last week of planned Release"? Is the Sprint Goal in jeopardy because of one Developer's absence?
The unit of planning and execution in Scrum is the Sprint. At least once per Sprint, the team should produce an Increment that is potentially releasable. A team should always have a working product got a release on a fixed date. The only question would be scope - is the full set of intended features available.
If the team is encountering a situation where they cannot meet their Sprint Goal, they should work with the Product Owner to maximize the value of the work that they do accomplish and ensure that the Sprint results in at least one potentially releasable product. The Scrum Master may be asked to facilitate these efforts.
Impact on release due to unavailability of 1 developer ? if release preparation is strict responsibility of only that developer, then that is not what Scrum recommends in a team. a SM should help the team to visualise this problem and guide them to find a solution to avoid such Bottleneck situations.
What Scrum Master should do if we are in last week of planned Release and Developer goes on unplanned leave?
Aren't the team planning to release work every Sprint? They should be. If they are, can the Sprint Goal still be met and a Done increment created? What contingency did the team plan into the Sprint to allow risks like this to be managed and controlled?
What Scrum Master should do if we are in last week of planned Release and Developer goes on unplanned leave?
My answer is that the Scrum Master has nothing to do here but observe how the Developers self-manage their reaction to accomplish the work. Then discuss the challenge with the team during a Sprint Retrospective to see if they felt there is anything that they need to do deal with this type of situation in the future.
1 developer should not make that much of a difference, if they do then it suggests that you have a Silo or maybe the team is taking on too much.
Reduce scope, replan the sprint. Inform the PO of the reduction, suggest to the PO that the stakeholders will need to be informed.