The creators of Scrum have described Scrum in the Scrum guide. By reading the Scrum guide, you get an idea of what Scrum is and how it can be applied. To work effectively with Scrum, it is important to be familiar with its key concepts. Professionals who have a good grasp of these concepts can get certified as Scrum Masters, Scrum Developers, or Product Owners. Since November 2020, there has been a new version of the Scrum guide. Several adjustments have been made to make Scrum even more applicable. Scrum itself has not changed; it has simply been described differently to make its application easier. Here, we discuss some important differences between the old Scrum guide (2017) and the new Scrum guide (2020). Starting from January 9, 2021, the scrum.org exams, which are very popular for demonstrating Scrum knowledge, will be based on the new Scrum guide.
So… What’s new in the renewed Scrum guide?
Less IT, more general
The Scrum guide used to be very IT-focused, despite explicitly stating that it was suitable for all forms of complex product development. With this revised version, this is no longer the case. There are fewer descriptions and examples of the concepts they explain, and everything is formulated more generally. Terms like “system”, “requirements”, and “testing” have been removed because they are easily associated with IT.
Goodbye development team
To make it less IT-oriented, they no longer talk about the development team. This term has been removed. Now it’s about developers. This is a good step; it was a bit strange to have the development team within the Scrum team. The part where it now discusses the product owner and the developers is clearer, partly because of this change. Even though there was no hierarchical relationship between the product owner and the development team before, it felt that way when you read the Scrum guide. This has been largely resolved by the new terminology.
Product goal
We already had a sprint goal. This was the goal of the sprint backlog, providing direction to the sprint. Now we have a product goal, which is to the product backlog what the sprint goal is to the sprint backlog. The product goal is intended to give the Scrum team direction across all sprints. This helps to maintain focus.
Each artifact has its own commitment
Scrum still has three artifacts: product backlog, sprint backlog, and increment. Previously, we had one commitment listed among the Scrum values. Now, in addition to that, there are three more commitments, one for each artifact:
- The product backlog’s commitment is the product goal.
- The sprint backlog’s commitment is the sprint goal.
- The increment’s commitment is the definition of done.
Scrum Master role
This is a major change. Previously, the role of Scrum Master was described as a “servant leader,” but now the Scrum Master is described as responsible for executing Scrum well and for the effectiveness of the Scrum team.
Example of the daily Scrum has been removed
Previously, they listed three exemplary questions that could be answered during the daily Scrum. These have been removed to make the format of the daily Scrum more open.
Self-managing instead of self-organizing
Self-organizing teams were really key to a good development team. This has been removed (as well as the term development team itself), and the emphasis is now on self-managing teams. This means that the responsibility of the Scrum team now extends beyond just organizing work; the team is expected to manage itself, even in areas not directly related to tasks.
Sprint planning extra question: why?
In the old version, sprint planning revolved around two questions: what are we going to do and how are we going to do it? Now, it has been added that the question of why it is valuable to do it must also be answered during sprint planning.
These are the main differences. But… long story short, to get a good idea of it, it is definitely recommended to just read the new Scrum guide yourself. The new Scrum guide is also much shorter and uses easier language. Exams have been updated to the new Scrum guide since January 9, so keep this in mind if you want to get certified!
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