Scrum Guide
The Scrum Guide is a document that defines the Scrum framework: its roles, events, artifacts, and the rules that connect them. It is maintained by Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland, the creators of Scrum, and is published free of charge at scrumguides.org.
History and Versions
The Scrum Guide has not always existed. Scrum was first described in articles and books from the mid-1990s onward, but there was no single, official document until 2010:
- 2010: first version published as a standalone document.
- 2011: first major revision. The section on Scrum values is added.
- 2013, 2016, 2017: minor revisions that refine definitions and remove obsolete prescriptions.
- 2020 (current version): the most significant revision to date. Main changes:
- Developers replace the "development team" as the name of the role.
- The commitments associated with each artifact are added: the product vision (for the Product Backlog), the Sprint Goal (for the Sprint Backlog), and the Definition of Done (for the increment).
- The Product Goal is formalized as the long-term commitment of the Product Backlog.
- The "pigs and chickens" terminology (the committed and the involved), present in earlier versions, is removed.
- The length of the document is reduced from ~19 to ~13 pages, removing prescriptions that were not part of the core of the framework.
What it says and what it doesn't
The Scrum Guide is intentionally minimalist. It describes the minimum rules of the framework without prescribing how to apply them in specific contexts. It does not describe:
- How to refine the backlog technically.
- How to estimate user stories.
- What tools to use.
- How to scale Scrum to multiple teams.
These decisions are deliberately left out so that teams can adapt them to their own context.
References
- Schwaber, Ken; Sutherland, Jeff. (2020). The Scrum Guide: The Definitive Guide to Scrum: The Rules of the Game. scrumguides.org.
See also
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