PMP Practice: Define Scope

Vikram Banerjee-Rao is leading an agile project at Bayou Intelligence Corp to develop a new mobile fitness app. During sprint planning, the product owner, Marcus, insists that the team must complete eight high-priority user stories to meet an upcoming industry conference demo in three weeks. The development team has reviewed the stories and believes they can realistically complete only five stories while maintaining their quality standards and sustainable pace. Historical velocity data from the past four sprints shows the team consistently delivers 30-35 story points per sprint, and the eight stories total 52 story points. Marcus argues that cutting scope will disappoint key investors attending the conference. The team is concerned that overcommitting will lead to technical debt and burnout. What should Vikram do?