Someone from the HR department approaches you. They regret to inform you that the Product Owner for your team is absent starting today and will be unavailable for the rest of this Sprint. The Product Owner might be back at work somewhere during the next Sprint, but it’s all unknown at this point. What should the Scrum Team do?

Many products and systems have complex architectures and operate on sophisticated infrastructures.
How are these planned in Scrum?
Is there a time period prior to the first development Sprint when these are planned and instantiated?
If so, how is the time to do this work figured into a plan?

The Product Owner requires transparent Increments to assess progress toward the Product Goal.
How is their ability to assess progress towards the Product Goal affected if the Increment is not transparent?
If the Developers do not yet have the skills or tooling to create an Increment every Sprint, what practices can be used to create as much transparency as possible?

During a retrospective, one of the more junior developers confesses he has a hard time getting his opinion heard. When discussing the work to be done, the more experienced developers often don’t let him finish his sentences or disregard what he has to say. What Scrum Values are touched upon here?

What is Scrum’s relation to Empiricism / Empirical Process Control?

A new Scrum Team wonders whether validation of quality should be done within every Sprint.
Are there benefits of including validation of quality within the Sprint’s development activities?
Explain what Scrum says about this.