Scrum adoptions: technical and advanced
Scrum can be adopted in two complementary ways: technical, applying the framework's rules exactly as defined in the Scrum Guide; and advanced or pragmatic, adapting those rules to the team's real circumstances once the spirit of the method has been internalized. Both adoptions are legitimate and form part of a natural maturity process.
Learning Scrum technically is the recommended first step for any team starting out in agility. Applying the rules exactly as defined—with no shortcuts or premature customizations—allows the team to understand what each element is for before modifying it.
Technical Scrum
Technical Scrum means following the framework faithfully: the three roles (Scrum Master, Product Owner, and developer), the five events (sprint, Sprint Planning, Daily Scrum, Sprint Review, and Sprint Retrospective), and the three artifacts (Product Backlog, Sprint Backlog, and increment). It is the ideal starting point because:
It creates a common base of language and expectations within the team. It allows the team to clearly identify what works and what does not before modifying it. It facilitates communication with other teams and with the organization.
Advanced Scrum
Once the team has internalized the framework and gained experience through retrospectives, it can begin adapting the rules to its own context. This is the advanced or pragmatic adoption. Some common adaptations:
Adjusting the duration or format of the events to the team's pace. Combining Scrum with Kanban practices to manage the workflow. Redefining the roles according to the organization's structure. Incorporating XP technical practices into the development cycle.
The key is that every adaptation should stem from a conscious decision by the team, backed by experience, and not from a desire to avoid the initial discomfort of the framework.
Scrum in teams with AI
The incorporation of generative AI tools into teams' daily work is raising new questions about how to adapt the framework. Some are technical (how do you estimate a story when part of the work is done by an AI?), others relate to process (how do you define "done" when the output is generated automatically?).
These are some of the adaptations teams are exploring:
- Extended acceptance criteria: when a story involves AI output, the acceptance criteria include output quality metrics and explicit human review.
- Daily Scrum with AI: some teams report the status of their AI pipelines or agents in the daily meeting alongside the human work, in order to maintain visibility over the whole.
- Adjusted estimation: a team's velocity can change significantly when AI tools are introduced. It is advisable to revisit the estimation baseline and not to assume that previous story points remain comparable.
Common mistake
Jumping straight to advanced Scrum without having practiced the basics. Customizing the framework before you understand it tends to mean removing exactly the elements that cause the most discomfort—which are also the ones that add the most value: the retrospective, the review with the customer, or the Definition of Done. The result is a process that's called Scrum but has lost its continuous-improvement mechanisms.
See also
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