The Scrum Guide 2020
A new version of the Scrum Guide was released on 18th November 2020 by its creators Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland who also celebrated 25 years of Scrum.
During the presentation of the new update, the authors said: “Scrum hasn’t changed, we just found a better way to describe it”.
As Scrum is built on the three pillars of empiricism and progress is based on observations of reality,
the Scrum framework itself is subject to empiricism too, indeed its creators use each increment to improve how the Scrum framework is described and what teams and organizations should be focusing on.
Let's have a look at some of the most significant changes in the brand new edition of the Scrum Guide 2020.
Shorter and less prescriptive
The new Scrum Guide 2020 is shorter (13 pages instead of 19), but more importantly it is less prescriptive, leaving you to decide how to implement it.
The Scrum framework only sets the goals for an empirical approach and trusts in the experience and creativity of the players to decide how to best play the game.
The changes emphasize that Scrum looks differently depending on where it is used and we have the autonomy to fill in the details based on what works best for us.
No more three questions on the Daily Scrum
The three questions “What did I do yesterday? What will I do today? Do I see any impediment that prevents me or the team from meeting the Sprint Goal?” disappeared.
The motivation behind that is still to keep the framework open and less prescriptive. Scrum Teams can propose any structure they want, provided that it focuses on the progress towards the Sprint Goal and produces a plan for the day.
If you’re looking for inspiration, check out my post “A better stand-up by walking the board”!
The first step of Sprint Planning is to talk about why
The Scrum Guide now introduces the topic of "why" the Sprint is valuable to stakeholders, in addition to the topics of "what" and "how".
When the purpose is clear, the selection of work is performed to make that possible, followed by a decomposition of work.
This further emphasizes that Scrum is about valuable outcomes.
From roles to accountabilities
In the new Scrum Guide 2020, the term role has been replaced with accountabilities.
The purpose of this change is to further emphasize that the roles of the Scrum framework are not a collection of job titles,
but they are actually the bare minimum set of accountabilities necessary to execute Scrum and develop a product in an empirical manner.
Roles have always described a set of accountabilities. However, removing roles helps to reduce the confusion often created by people thinking that a role is a job title.
The accountabilities are split into 3 groups: Scrum Master, Product Owner, Developer.
No more “Development Team”, but simply “Developers”
The term “Development Team” has been replaced with the term “Developers” with the aim to remove the idea of there being “another” team within the Scrum Team.
This change brings the focus back to delivering value and being responsible for it as one team, there are no sub-teams or hierarchies.
For the new Scrum Guide, everyone in the Scrum Team who contributes to achieving the Sprint Goal is considered a “Developer”. Regardless of their job titles and skills, everyone on the team is part of the development effort.
This further emphasizes that Scrum is about the accountabilities, and not job titles or roles.
Introduction of Product Goal
The Scrum Guide 2020 introduces the concept of a Product Goal to provide a long-term focus for the Scrum Team.
The Product Goal is to the Product Backlog what a Sprint Goal is to Sprint Backlog, it describes your Product Backlog and gives direction to the Scrum team.
Each of the three Artifacts now has a corresponding ‘commitment’.
The commitment for the Product Backlog is the Product Goal, the Sprint Backlog has the Sprint Goal, and the Increment has the Definition of Done.
That said, after 25 years, Scrum is still immutable.
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