Find out what’s new, changed and gone in Scrum’s latest guide

2020 was a whirlwind year full of major events that changed our world, as well as smaller changes that had us adapting the most unexpected aspects of our lives.

The tech industry was no stranger to these changes, and not just because of the 2020 pandemic. In fact, last year saw a pretty significant update to one of the industry’s go to guides: The Scrum Guide.

Having been last updated in 2017, 2020 brought a major overhaul to Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland’s guide that had Scrum Masters around the world bring out their magnifying glasses and closely inspect this revamped document.

Fortunately, most of these changes are aimed at simplifying Scrum, and this was reflected in a shorter Scrum Guide that is now just 14 pages long. Still, if you’re not a Scrum Master yourself, you might not have the time to read through the whole document and reference back to older versions to see what has changed. Lucky for you, we’re here to do just that, but first, let’s go over the basics.

First things first: What is Scrum?

If you work in tech, you have surely heard the term “Scrum” often tossed around with other buzzwords such as “agile” and “sprint”. But, what does it actually mean?

In short, Scrum is just a framework, but not a software framework like Angular or React. As defined by its own creators, Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland, Scrum is “a lightweight framework that helps people, teams and organizations generate value through adaptive solutions for complex problems.”

In other words, Scrum is meant to help you and your team find simple solutions for difficult problems, and is one of the holy grails of project management in the software industry.

Every single element and process in the Scrum framework is defined in the official Scrum Guide. And those who follow this methodology carefully study it to make sure they can best apply its principles and take their project to the next level.

It should come as no surprise, then, that as soon as it was updated in late 2020, it was scrutinized for new terms and changes by thousands of people around the world. And they had their work cut out for them, as the 2020 Scrum Guide introduced new concepts, redefined some old ones, and even got rid of some elements that had been part of the framework for quite some time. Let’s break these down!

What is new?

As is to be expected with any major overhaul, the new guide introduced a few new concepts to the framework. Let’s take a closer look at some of them:

Product goal

If you’ve read previous versions of the Scrum Guide, you should be familiar with the concept of a sprint goal. In the guide’s own words, a sprint goal is “an objective that will be met within the Sprint through the implementation of the Product Backlog, and it provides guidance to the Development Team on why it is building the Increment.”

Similarly, the 2020 Scrum Guide introduces the concept of a product goal, which is to the Product Backlog what the sprint goal is to the Sprint Backlog. As defined by the 2020 guide, a product goal “is the long-term objective for the Scrum Team” and it “describes a future state of the product which can serve as a target for the Scrum Team to plan against”.

The product goal is, in short, the Product Backlog’s commitment, which might have you wondering… What is a commitment? Don’t worry, we were just getting to that.

Commitments

Previous versions of the Scrum Guide introduced Scrum “artifacts”, which are concepts that introduce a Scrum work or value. This time, these have been expanded to contain a “commitment” meant to reinforce the connection to Scrum values in a clearer and more practical way.

Schwaber and Sutherland explain that commitments are made to make sure that each artifact “provides information that enhances transparency and focus against which progress can be measured.”

For that reason, they propose three commitments: the product goal, as described above; the sprint goal, which corresponds to the Sprint Backlog; and the “definition of done”, which corresponds to the increment and, as we will see below, is one of the aspects that have remained from previous versions, but have undergone some changes in 2020.

What is gone?

One of the main features of this 2020 Scrum Guide update was its goal of becoming a simpler and less prescriptive guide. To achieve this, a lot of old Scrum concepts had to go, which doesn’t necessarily mean they’re not applicable any more. Instead, this version of the Scrum Guide aims at leaving more room for exploration, providing guidelines that can be adapted by each team to its specific situation. With that in mind, the following elements are some of the ones that got the chop:

The three daily meeting questions

Anyone who has been part of a Scrum team knows these questions all too well. They were meant to help structure Daily Scrums, which are short daily meetings used to check on the team’s progress towards completing the sprint goal and completing the sprint backlog. The previous Scrum Guides suggested that each member of the team answer the three following questions:

• What did I do yesterday that helped the Development Team meet the Sprint Goal?
• What will I do today to help the Development Team meet the Sprint Goal?
• Do I see any impediment that prevents me or the Development Team from meeting the Sprint Goal?

However, as useful as these questions were for some teams that needed to find some structure, following them to the letter could end up being too limiting. And, as mentioned before, one of the goals of this 2020 guide was to make Scrum less prescriptive so, this time around, there is not even a mention of the word “question”.

Of course, this doesn’t mean you can’t use them if they work for your team. It just means that you can decide on a completely different structure and still call it Scrum as long as it ticks all the boxes of a Daily Scrum.

The development team

Yes, that’s right, development teams have been scrapped from the 2020 Scrum Guide! But, fear not, this doesn’t mean programmers will soon be left without a job. The guide has simply done away with the term, which has now been replaced by “developers”.

In essence, this change aims, once again, to simplify things and, instead of having nesting teams (previous guides talked about a Development Team within the Scrum Team), this version chooses to only talk about a Scrum Team.

This might seem like a minor change, but it carries a lot of weight. The idea behind it is to encourage teams to work as a whole and share responsibilities.

What else has changed?

Finally, there are some concepts that were introduced in earlier versions of the Scrum Guide and made it to the 2020 version, but not without undergoing some changes. Here are some examples of concepts that were refined in the latest Scrum Guide version:

The definition of done

As we mentioned when we discussed some of the new terms that were introduced with the 2020 Scrum Guide, the definition of done is now the commitment for the Increment. 

This change heightens this concept’s relevance, as illustrated by the fact that the guide states that “The moment a Product Backlog item meets the Definition of Done, an Increment is born.”

Moreover, with the Development Team gone, the responsibility of defining the definition of done now lies with the whole Scrum Team, once again encouraging them to take on responsibilities as a whole.

The Scrum Master’s role

Perhaps one of the bigger changes in this revised Scrum Guide, comes with the reexamination of one of Scrum’s pillars: the Scrum Master.

Before, Scrum Masters were defined as “servant-leaders”. By contrast, this new version gets rid of that term and instead describes them as “true leaders who serve the Scrum Team and the larger organization.

This responds to a common misconception of the previous term which, by putting “servant” first, was often construed as assigning Scrum Masters a role that resembled more that of an assistant or a secretary. With this new definition, there is little room left for misinterpretation.

Can we say this is a “new” Scrum?

The changes described above are just some of the modifications introduced to the Scrum Guide in the 2020 version. It’s undoubtedly a significant revision that has pushed many Scrum Teams, which after three years had grown comfortable with the “old” ways, to review their Scrum practices.

When the dust is settled, however, the core values of Scrum have remained the same. If anything, this update aims at refocusing on those values, and making Scrum more accessible to everyone. We’re excited to see how they shape the future of Scrum!

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