The Scrum Guide introduces a more straightforward framework that's more accessible and inclusive to any industry, distancing its IT origins. It also clarifies some terms and eliminates unnecessary and complex statements.

At Light-it, we find this agile team collaboration framework super useful for making our project flows work more effectively. We're excited to share the key points of this guide and resources to help you boost your team's performance.

The Scrum Team: it consists of the Product Owner, Developers (people creating usable increments), and the Scrum Master. There are no sub-teams or hierarchies as you might remember from the previous version, what was defined as the Development Team was removed to reduce the potential conflicts and to focus the whole Scrum Team on the same objective: the Product Goal. The Scrum Team as a whole is responsible for creating a valuable, useful increment for every Sprint.

The product Goal: The Scrum Team shares this long-term objective, which is described as a future wishable state of the product.

Scrum Masters are defined as "true leaders who serve the Scrum Team and the larger organization." In the past, this was represented by the figure of servant-leader, now removed.

Self-management: this term is used to highlight that Scrum Teams choose "who, how, and what to work on," while on past Scrum Guides, the term "self-organization" described that Development Teams chose "who and how to do work."

Events: The purpose of events is clarified, and the instructions for conduction are more flexible.

Commitments: Each of the three artifacts (product backlog, Sprint Backlog, and a potentially releasable product increment) holds commitments (responsibilities). The Product Backlog has the Product Goal, the Sprint Backlog has the Sprint Goal, and the Increment has the Definition of Done. This also helps define some terms such as sprint goal and "done" which were roughly described in the previous Scrum Guide.

"Done" definition: it's now clarified that it creates a (potentially releasable) Product Increment. "The Definition of Done is a formal description of the state of the Increment when it meets the quality measures required for the product. The moment a Product Backlog item meets the Definition of Done, an Increment is born." (Scrum Guide, 2020).

Scrum Guide Series 2024:

The Scrum Guide YouTube Playlist was created and curated by Michael Vizdos, founder of ScrumInSchool.org and co-creator of the Agile in Education Compass and the Agile Educator Guide.

This stands as as the most current official version of the Scrum Guide by Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland (the co-creators of the Scrum Framework) in an audiovisual format, very dynamic and easy to digest.

Watch the Scrum Guide 2024

Scrum Official Guide 2020:

Ken Schwaber (software developer) and Jeff Sutherland (project manager) co-developed the Scrum framework to assist companies having trouble with challenging development projects. They wrote and produced the official 2020 Scrum Guide, which includes the framework's official definition.

Download the official 2020 Scrum Guide PDF

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