CAB (Change Advisory Board) In Scrum???

In my current company, we are not allowed to create a User Story in JIRA unless a specific requirement passes the Change Advisory Board

What does the Product Owner think about this? Was this constraint his or her decision?

From the Scrum Guide

The Product Owner is the sole person responsible for managing the Product Backlog. 

The Product Owner is one person, not a committee. The Product Owner may represent the desires of a committee in the Product Backlog, but those wanting to change a Product Backlog item’s priority must address the Product Owner.

Ordering the items in the Product Backlog to best achieve goals and missions;

Optimizing the value of the work the Development Team performs;

For the Product Owner to succeed, the entire organization must respect his or her decisions. The Product Owner’s decisions are visible in the content and ordering of the Product Backlog.

Sounds like the organization is not trusting of the Product Owner to do the job for which they are responsible.  If, as you say, an issue occurs based on the Product Backlog Items, then that issue should be inspected and adaptions made. If the Change Advisory Board is the suggested adaption I would accept it partially. My exception to that is the Product Owner is the one that decides if anything makes it into the Product Backlog. The CAB would become a stakeholder, participate in the Sprint Review and provide their input on course correction as appropriate. You could even include CAB representatives in refinement so that they can help to clarify the work that will be undertaken.  I don't really see a reason to introduce an impediment into the process.  And the Scrum Master is responsible removing impediments. If you are the Scrum Master, it would be up to you to work on addressing this. 

Daniel Wilhite +1 , nothing more to say

I worked in a project where having a "Change Control Board" was required by the relevant engineering standards (it was a space flight related project). Here is how we solved this:

We did not implement a formal Change Control Board. Instead, we explained that new requirements would have to be raised with the Product Owner, who would raise it with the Development Team during Backlog Refinement. The team would give input and, if necessary, provide a rough estimate. Based on that information, the PO has the final say on whether or not,t he requirement is put in the Product Backlog. The PO also decides where to put it on the backlog.

This was enough to satisfy auditors, because it's really how CCBs work anyway, except there wasn't a formal vote, which - as it turns out - wasn't required by the standard.

Note however, that in this case, we were required to have such a process in place in order to receive the certification necessary to market to product to customers.

What does the Product Owner think about this? Was this constraint his or her decision?

 I guess so. I don't want to speak ill of our PO (who is my boss) but I think she wants to make sure that all requirements only gets approved by her.



Sounds like the organization is not trusting of the Product Owner to do the job for which they are responsible.  If, as you say, an issue occurs based on the Product Backlog Items, then that issue should be inspected and adaptions made. If the Change Advisory Board is the suggested adaption I would accept it partially. My exception to that is the Product Owner is the one that decides if anything makes it into the Product Backlog. The CAB would become a stakeholder, participate in the Sprint Review and provide their input on course correction as appropriate. You could even include CAB representatives in refinement so that they can help to clarify the work that will be undertaken.  I don't really see a reason to introduce an impediment into the process.  And the Scrum Master is responsible removing impediments. If you are the Scrum Master, it would be up to you to work on addressing this. 

I was actually planning to raise this idea! I'm thinking that they could be part of the sprint planning and review. However I don't think that's gonna happen anymore. They decided to make the development projects into Kanban... 



Thanks for all the reply everyone!!