Changes to the Scrum Guide 2020: Facilitating adoption in non-IT Industries

The Guide is Leaner and Transparent

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Reduced the Complexities and less Prescriptive

Over the years, updates and changes have been made to the Scrum guide making it more prescriptive. New elements have been added and described making it a lot more complex than its initial intent. The whole idea of Scrum is that it is a minimalistic framework. The founders have kept to their promise in this update and have reduced the complexities and prescriptive nature to make it more useful for a wider range of uses. The Daily Scrum Questions have been deleted, the retrospective items in the Sprint Backlog have been simplified

Inclusion of Product Goal

The concept of a Product Goal has been introduced in this version, which was not present in previous versions. This Product Goal acts as a vision and is the direct focus of the team. The inclusion of the product goal gives a larger objective that all the sprints are working towards. The product backlog, which includes all the activities that the Scrum Team is doing is now aligned to the product Goal. This ensures that all the work done by the Scrum team has a specified direction. It provides a tangible relationship between the work done during the sprint and the overall business strategy of the organization. The effort of all the sprints will be aligned towards a single goal. The fact that the word ‘product goal’ has been used makes it more inclusive towards all other organizations and entities and not just software and IT.

Sprint Planning: What, Why and How

Sprint Planning has also become clearer. In addition to the What and How, the ‘Why’ has been included which provides a clear indication of what the sprint is trying to achieve. Each work done by the Scrum Team is more focused on the reasons for the particular activity and the result is analyzed in proportion to the sprint goal. This is important as every Sprint is an investment in terms of time and money and why that particular sprint is being done is important to create a vision for the sprint.

Shift from Self-Organizing to Self-Managing

The focus is now on a Self-managing team as opposed to a self-organizing one. The team members are empowered to choose who, how, and what to work on. Team members will be more inclined to do their part if they are part of the decision-making process and are responsible for its completion.

Specific Commitments and Accountabilities

The scrum artifacts all have specific commitments. These commitments are focused on the goals of each artifact and therefore the focus is shifted from tasks and onto goals.

The roles are now referred to as accountabilities. Though this change is subtle, its purpose is to emphasize that the scrum members don’t have a job to do but rather they have a set of responsibilities that are necessary for the implementation of a successful sprint and that they are accountable for it.

Removing certain elements from the previous guide doesn’t mean that the importance of these ideas has been reduced. They can still be used in different situations. The mandatory nature of such action has been eliminated so that the guide can be usable for a wider audience without forcing certain tasks that may not be applicable for that organization. The core principles of scrum; Empiricism, Inspection, and Adaptation are still inherent in the framework. The changes have only been made to encourage the practice of the scrum framework, not only in IT but in other industries as well. Due to the additional clarity inherent in the new guide and the elimination of the prescriptions, practitioners will be able to adapt and finetune the scrum practices to deliver valuable products and services.