Why is Scrum a lightweight framework?

The Scrum guide defines Scrum as ‘a lightweight framework that helps people, teams and organisations generate value through adaptive solutions for complex problems.’ But what does the Scrum Guide mean by the phrase ‘lightweight’?

The Oxford Dictionary defines lightweight as ‘one of less than average weight’.

Compared to traditional project management methods, the Scrum Guide is lightweight, as:

1. It is not prescriptive, whilst it provides some guidance on accountabilities, events, artifacts and rules, it does not however give a detailed approach on ‘how’ to create complex products (the Scrum guide is only 13 pages in length).

2. Scrum is founded and supports empiricism and makes organisational problems more transparent. Scrum supports inspection, adaptation and transparency.

3. It has five lightweight events. The Sprint acts as a containing event for the four inspect and adapt Events, Sprint Planning, Daily Scrum, Sprint Review and the Sprint Retrospective. These regular lightweight events in a Sprint avoid the need for unnecessary meetings which add no value.

4. It has a few documents, Scrum calls these artefacts, the Product Backlog, the Sprint Backlog and the Increment, they include work or value. We are not wasting valuable time creating artifacts that serve no purpose.

5. The team is small (The Scrum Team). It consists of a Scrum Master, a Product Owner, and Developers. Typically consisting of 10 or fewer people.

Scrum was created to enable teams and organisations to generate value through adaptive solutions for complex problems. The overhead in Scrum is kept as small as possible. The authors of the Scrum Guide, state that the Scrum Framework is ‘purposefully incomplete’.

Scrum is lightweight and incomplete for a reason. It gives you enough information to get started. It provides the ‘why’ of Scrum and some guidance on ‘how’ you use Scrum. Scrum allows you to learn and improve from there. You will create and have your own ‘patterns, processes, and insight that fit within theScrum Framework’. Scrum recognises that local context is important.

Scrum is people orientated rather than process-oriented, for this reason, it is lightweight. The Scrum Guide states that ‘Scrum is built upon by the collective intelligence of the people using it. Scrum does not provide detailed instructions or a manual like we find in an Ikea furniture flat pack. If you follow these instructions, you are guaranteed success. Rather Scrum only defines the parts required to implement Scrum theory. Scrum does not guarantee success or give you the answers, but what it does do is make your pains and issues transparent.

Scrum does not provide a detailed job description for the accountability of a Scrum Master, Developers and Product Owner that form the Scrum Team. What it does do is define some boundaries. In terms of size, a team should be focused on a single Product Goal and they are accountable for creating value. What Scrum does do is provide some insight as to accountabilities within the Scrum Team. The Scrum Guide does provide a description of accountabilities for ‘specific areas’ with require specific skillsets.

The Scrum artifacts are also lightweight. The Product Backlog is ‘emergent’ and not a traditional detailed requirements document. It contains only those items that are ‘needed to improve the product’, if it does not improve the product then it is not needed. In addition to the Events, Scrum defines the ‘ongoing activity’ of Product Backlog refinement. This is an ongoing activity. The Sprint Backlog is lightweight. It contains a Sprint Goal and the Product Backlog Items selected for the upcoming Sprint with an outline plan to deliver the increment. The plan is not a Gantt chart but is a ‘real-time picture’ of the work which is updated throughout the Sprint as more is learned. The Sprint Backlog has just enough detail that the Developers can inspect their progress in the Daily Scrum. As such it must be lightweight and transparent. The Increment is lightweight too. It is a stepping stone toward the Product Goal. Scrum recognises that the activity of planning is more important than the plan itself. Plans will change as we get feedback from inspection of the increment and as such Scrum Teams adapt their plans. This mindset honours the Agile Manifesto of adapting to change over following a plan.

The Scrum Events are lightweight in nature, with a focus to maximise learning. The Scrum Framework does provide a set of lightweight rules that help The Scrum Team to achieve a minimal level of empiricism. An ‘event’ can be described, when there is some noteworthy happening, a social occasion or activity. Each of the Scrum events is noteworthy, they act as a social occasion and have a purpose. The Sprint for example, is one month or less in duration which creates faster empirical feedback loops, by which time the Developers would have produced at least one ‘done’ increment and enable the team to validate their assumptions about value.

The other Scrum Events are deliberately simple too. They increase transparency and increase the frequency of collaboration with an aim to improve the product.

Scrum is founded on empiricism and lean thinking. The Scrum events enable knowledge to be gained from the experience and allow for decisions to be made on what has been observed. The Scrum events allow for frequent inspection and adaptation. As the Scrum Guide says ‘these events work because they implement the empirical Scrum pillars of transparency, inspection, and adaptation’.

Scrum is lightweight as it does not state which processes, techniques or methods to use when using Scrum. It recognises that the world of product management is bigger than Scrum. The Scrum guide states that there are ‘various processes, techniques and methods can be employed within the framework’. Scrum wraps around existing processes, techniques and methods. Which and how you use them is context-specific. The Scrum Guide is a framework and whatever tools the Scrum teams are using to produce the next iterative version of the product.

We live in a world where change is a constant. Businesses must be able to respond to this change by producing innovative products, solutions and services. The true power of Scrum lies in its simplicity and its ability to support empiricism. The lightweight nature of Scrum enables an incremental and iterative approach to optimise predictability and risk. The Scrum Framework was created to help ‘people, teams and organisations generate value through adaptive solutions for complex projects.’ Product development is in its nature very complex since the problem cannot be fully understood. The simplicity of Scrum allows us to observe, experience and experiment.