Agile Development: What changed in the Scrum Guide 2020?
By: Lazaro Ibanez
Tags: Scrum, Scrum Guide, Agile, Agile Methodology, Agile Development

The year 2020 has been a tough one and for many, this have been a lost year, in several senses of the word: on top of the loss of human lives, the pandemic paused many people’s progress on family and career goals. Additionally it forced our celebrations and holiday gatherings either onto Zoom or out of existence. But nothing of these stopped Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland, the creators of Scrum, to publish an update of the Scrum Guide on November 18th, 2020. According to the co-creators, the Scrum Guide 2020 aims at:

“Bringing Scrum back to being a minimally sufficient framework by removing or softening prescriptive language.”

Before we mention the 2020 changes, let’s have a look at was hasn’t changed from the previous version of 2017.

What hasn’t changed: Scrum is still Scrum.

Scrum is still a simple framework for effective team collaboration on complex products. It gives the opportunity to address complex adaptive problems, while productively and creatively delivering products of the highest possible value.

According to the update, Scrum requires a Scrum Master to foster an environment where:

A Product Owner orders the work for a complex problem into a Product Backlog. The Scrum Team turns a selection of the work into an Increment of value during a Sprint. The Scrum Team and its stakeholders inspect the results and adjust for the next Sprint. Repeat

What has changed:

Simplification of language and opening it to everyone, not only IT.

Changes to some definitions: Scrum definition, empiricism, Product Backlog, Sprint Goal, Sprint Backlog, Increment, Definition of Done.

Elements added and their relationships clarified, e.g., the Commitments, Product Goal (new), Sprint Goal and Definition of Done.

In 2017’s version we had only one mention of Commitment, in the 2020’s version we have three Commitments, each one derived from one Artifact:

Product Goal is the commitment for the Product Backlog. Sprint Goal is the commitment for Sprint Backlog. Definition of Done is the commitment for the Increment.

The three questions: What did I do yesterday? What problems I have? What am I going to do today? from the Daily Scrum were made optional in 2017 and in 2020 they disappeared. It means that the “Developers” can propose any structure they want, provided that it focuses on the progress towards the Sprint Goal and produces a plan for the day.

The concept of a Development Team within a Scrum Team was removed to reduce the potential for dysfunctions between the Product Owner and the Development Team (“us vs. them”) and focus the entire Scrum Team on the same objective.

A Scrum Team now consists of the Product Owner, Developers, and the Scrum Master. The people doing the work of creating a usable Increment are called Developers.

The “entire Scrum Team is accountable for creating a valuable, useful Increment every Sprint.” The Developers are accountable for all aspects of creating the usable Increment.

The terms “accountable” and “responsible” are used more consistently, and “roles” is replaced by “accountabilities”.

The Scrum Guide now uses the terms “self-managing” and “self-management” to emphasise that Scrum Teams choose “who, how and what to work on” whereas the Scrum Guide 2017 used the terms “organising” and “organisation” to describe that Development Teams chose “who and how to do work”.

The term servant-leader was removed, and Scrum Masters are now described as “true leaders who serve the Scrum Team and the larger organisation”.

Sprint Planning now has three topics: “Why is this Sprint valuable?”, “What can be Done this Sprint?” and “How will the chosen work get done?”.

The purpose of events is clarified and the description how to conduct them is less prescriptive.

The concept of “Product Goal” is introduced, serving as a target and describing a future state of the product: Within a Scrum Team, there are no sub-teams or hierarchies. It is a cohesive unit of professionals focused on one objective at a time, the Product Goal.

It is clarified that multiple Increments can be delivered within a Sprint, even prior to the end of a Sprint. Sprint Review is not a gate to releasing value.

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