What’s new in Scrum Guide 2020

And what has changed for us!!

Ken Schwaber & Jeff Sutherland came up with a new version of scrum guide. So number of pages have been reduced, keeping the thought that more words makes things complicated, but what else have changed. Lets have a look by starting with the Preamble(As per me) of change

“The Scrum framework is purposefully incomplete, only defining the parts required to implement Scrum theory. Scrum is built upon by the collective intelligence of the people using it.”

Well the statement is self explanatory and is a nice add. It majorly explain the view of creators while making the changes. Lets see what these are.

Introduction of Product Goal

“The Product Goal describes a future state of the product which can serve as a target for the Scrum Team to plan against.”

To include a long term goal for product.

This is the one step to “deliver value”. Now what we work in a sprint is clear but why we are doing it will be answered by this. So the necessity was that the teams are sprinting keeping just the short term goal in mind but not considering the long term goal, which would be our product goal. This increases the transparency within the organization.

2017 guide says a word “vision” which is being removed now. Vision is vague, and the product goal added some feel of commitment which, after few inspect and adapts, will ultimately will define the vision.

Daily Scrum

Finally there is a good bye to 3 questions format in daily scrum.

• 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?

But the matter of fact is that even previous scrum guide did not even mentioned those questions as mandatory. But it brings to one’s mind that it is the scrum recommended method and nothing else is to be followed.

So now do not restrict yourself to this format. Innovate!!

Improvement in Backlog Refinement

I searched for the word “Estimate” in new scrum found and the search results showed, that is is not found. Also earlier, It used to define 10 percent of effort in backlog refinement, which is not there. Does that mean we should not do it? No, they just want us to do refinement our own way. The way which added value to the process.

In the refinement, the word “Estimate” is replaced with “Sizing”. So that makes sense when you do things empirically.

Clarifying that the increment can be delivered any time in the sprint

“The moment a Product Backlog item meets the Definition of Done, an Increment is born.”

And

“Multiple Increments may be created within a Sprint. The sum of the Increments is presented at the Sprint Review thus supporting empiricism.”

Even the earlier guide meant the same but the statement is redefined to make the process clear. So now(or even earlier one can) you can release an increment on the Day1, get feedback and rework empirically.

There is only one team called Scrum team

There is no such term called “Development team”. We just have one team, scrum team consisting of Product Owner, Scrum Master and developers.

Though it do not changes any roles for any person but just put the whole responsibility to team as a whole. Also it added another leverage to split large teams into small. In the guide, Developer teams has changed to developers.

“If Scrum Teams become too large, they should consider reorganizing into multiple cohesive Scrum Teams, each focused on the same product.”

Couple of teams still follows that structure.

Addition of “Why” in Sprint planning

What and How, is now replaced with Why, What and How. So I believe we use to do this “Why” thing. May be after attaining certain level of maturity in the sprint process, teams started to think of this “Why”. Now this is added as a reminder to the teams starting the scrum framework to start considering this “why” to add value to the product and the increment.

Clearer Accountability of Scrum Master

“The Scrum Master is accountable for the Scrum Team’s effectiveness.”

So now Scrum master is no longer a “Servant-leader”. This means that scrum master should go over from a secretarial job of arranging meetings, sending invites. this is to shift the role from a “servant” to a “leader” and take accountability of the value delivered by a scrum team.

Artifacts comes with a commitment

For the Product Backlog it is the Product Goal.

For the Sprint Backlog it is the Sprint Goal.

For the Increment it is the Definition of Done.

We have covered Product goal separately and sprint goal was always been there. Definition of done is tied to the increment just to make people push towards a better increments which is acceptable by stake holder.

Self Managing(Not Self Organizing)

The word organizing changed to managing.

When we say self organizing, teams own the ‘how’ to do the work, along with deciding ‘who’ does the work within the team. Whereas, in a self-managed structure, employees own the ‘how’ and who, along with the ‘what’ to work on.

So when we add “what’s” and “why’s” we are no more organizing, but managing.

“Lean” thinking

“Scrum is founded on empiricism and lean thinking.”

With lean thinking, organizations have to seek to eliminate processes that aren’t valuable and keeping the lean principals in mind.

My views on change

So this guide did some changes to get out of scrum anti-patterns and provided more free hand to the team to Inspect and adapt while remaining transparent.

Though being a believer in the scrum process, I cannot consider it the best but yes a better increment of it. Though the roles have been the same, as nothing has changed but all we need to change in scrum is a mindset, which I believe is what represented in a change. Lets show some agility and inspect it thoroughly to again adapt accordingly.

The major aim of organizations implementing scrum framework remains “quality product with value to customer” and this is what this change is trying to achieve in the process.