The Scrum community and especially its two founders Sutherland and Schwaber update the main document, the Scrum Guide, every few years. After the last update in October 2017 it was time again this November. The goal of these updates is not to radically change Scrum, but rather to find a better and more concise format to describe and explain it.
Shorter and easier to read
The first thing you notice is the length — the English PDF version has shrunk from about 19 to a pleasant 13 pages. The language has also been improved: the guide is easier to read and less prescriptive. The big challenge for the authors is that Scrum is not only used in different contexts of software development but has also gained popularity as a framework for any kind of knowledge work in complex spaces. With this comes the desire to avoid technical terms from the IT world as much as possible.
One Scrum Team
The "development team" has been removed from the guide. There is now only one team, the Scrum Team, consisting of Developers, Scrum Master and Product Owner. For the "Developer" as the executing role no alternative term has been included — many would have preferred "team members" or something similar.
Framework, not method
Contrary to what we often hear and read, Scrum does not want to be a method but a framework. The corresponding method is empirical process control with the pillars Inspect, Adapt, and Transparency. New and valuable at this point is the reference to lean thinking and the paradigm of avoiding waste — speed is not an end in itself, but rather the targeted creation and delivery of value.
Product Goal — a new concept
An expression of this focus is the newly introduced product goal, a mid- to long-term goal for the product expressed in the product backlog. The product backlog is by no means a collection of ideas but an outlook on the near future, continuously adapted. The product goal is particularly helpful for teams that see themselves misused as a pure feature factory.
Commitments for all three artefacts
With the product goal, the concept of commitment returns to the guide — now applied to each of the three Scrum artefacts:
- Product backlog → Product Goal
- Sprint backlog → Sprint Goal
- Increment → Definition of Done
Multiple Increments
The Scrum Guide now explicitly acknowledges multiple increments during the sprint — an adjustment necessary in the age of continuous delivery, where the practice of only publishing work at the end of a sprint is increasingly uncommon.
Sprint Planning: three topics
Sprint Planning has been extended with a third topic. In addition to "What can we do?" and "How do we get there?", teams now first consider why the sprint will be valuable. This embeds Simon Sinek's "start with why" directly into the planning ritual.
Accountabilities, not roles
The term "role" has been replaced throughout by accountabilities — a more accurate description of what Scrum actually assigns: areas of responsibility, not job titles.
Self-managed vs. self-organised
The description of teams has shifted from self-organised to self-managed. The intention is to clarify that the sphere of influence of teams primarily concerns the organisation of their own work — not necessarily the entire company.
Like all previous versions, the current changes are only an attempt to make Scrum as a framework easier to understand. In the spirit of "inspect and adapt", this edition is also only temporary.
The current Scrum Guide: scrumguides.org.
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