Less Prescriptive

The Scrum Guide has reduced in size from 19 to 13 pages. The aim of this was stated by Ken Schwaber to be an effort to simplify Scrum. Fewer words help to simplify the guide. Less words equals less complexity.

When Ken and Jeff first attempted to write a guide to Scrum around 2001 it was (apparently) 160 pages in length. Official Scrum Guides since 2010 have been between 16 & 19 pages.

In a video announcing the new Scrum Guide, Ken Schwaber talked about how when he used to teach people about Scrum, they would ask for examples about how to do certain things. In an effort to help them many details and examples were added to Scrum. Ken’s observation was that while these examples helped the person asking for the specific answer for their specific case, these details served to confuse and cause problems for a much larger group who now felt they had to do things in the same way, even if it did not make sense if their environment. To that end, significant effort has been made to remove prescriptions, repetitions and contradictions and simplify the Scrum Guide in this latest edition.

To reduce it by 6 pages will inevitably mean some significant elements will no longer be present. Here are some of the elements that have been refined/reduced/removed:

• Uses of Scrum section – Specific examples of where Scrum can be used that were added in the 2017 update have been removed.
• Scrum Team size – Reduced and adjusted details indicating 10 or fewer people as the optimum Scrum Team size.
• Sprint – Reduced details on Sprint cancellation and the circumstances surrounding it.
• Daily Scrum – Reduced details including the removal of any mention of the “3 questions”.
• Sprint Review – Reduced details including the removal of the description of the elements of a Sprint Review.
• Sprint Retrospective – Reduced details including prescriptions around how to run a Sprint Review and what things to inspect.
• Product Backlog – Reduced details including a shortened and less prescriptive description of Product Backlog refinement. Attributes of a Product Backlog are no longer mandated as it is recognised they may vary due to context.