County IT operations wants a multi-month production freeze on the public-health clinic booking product, arguing that any change risks an outage during flu season. The freeze would stop validated appointment improvements. What should the Product Owner do?
Select an answer to reveal the explanation.
Short Explanation
A total freeze is like closing the clinic so nobody can catch a cold in the waiting room — safe, and useless. The job is safer change, not no change. Risk-based releases keep the lights on without locking value in the basement.
Full Explanation
Internal operations stakeholders legitimately care about stability, especially on public-health systems. A blanket freeze, however, blocks inspection of valuable Increments and treats risk as binary. The Product Owner should negotiate approaches such as smaller releases, feature toggles, defined rollback, or risk-based release criteria that protect service while continuing to deliver outcomes. Overruling operations or hiding work in an unused environment does not maximize value.