It's not the way this particular startup implemented Scrum. If you're doing fixed-length iterations, I've seem many times managers/PO asking for some stories to

It's not the way this particular startup implemented Scrum. If you're doing fixed-length iterations, I've seem many times managers/PO asking for some stories to be done during the next cycle. Now, some people will say "You're doing it wrong", but here's the deal: Scrum facilitates this to happen, and you have to spend a lot of time and energy fighting against it. The boss will come and say "Here's what you have to do in the next couple weeks". And the velocity becomes a purpose by itself. Instead of measuring what happened, it's a number to be beaten. It's really sad when this happen, but I've seen it a lot of times.