Take the external contractor example. Say the agency fails to deliver on time. At the sprint retrospective meeting you sit around and say “what can we do to keep that from happening again?” You might decide to pay more money (be more responsive), or hire someone in house, or just decide to write a more forgiving schedule the next time. Whatever the choice, you’ve made progress for the next time.

Sales is the same way. At the sprint kickoff, the team outlines what external dependencies there are. If sales can’t commit their resources that you need to get your user story done, then you need to pick a different user story. Or maybe they commit but fail to follow through – you’re back to the retrospective meeting, and you realize “we missed this story because sales didn’t deliver.” Scrum isn’t going to solve your sales communication problem, but it will make it visible.