We all know how much of an importance it possesses for scrum professionals or those who are keen in developing Scrum skills. The release of the new scrum guide 2020 took place on the 18th of November this year, and we came to know that there are quite changes made in this version. The last changes or updates were made in 2017 and now in 2020. So let us take a look at what’s new in Scrum guide 2020.

What’s New now?
- Three questions on daily scrum have been eliminated
- There’s no development team
- Introducing a new term “product goal”
- Introduction to three commitments
- Self-managing over self-organizing
- Sprint planning re-planned
  - Understanding why the sprint is valuable?
  - What else can be done in this sprint?
  - How the chosen work is going to be done?
- No more servant leader
- Simplification of Language
Conclusion

Are you a working in a Scrum environment, validate your skills as Scrum professional with these FREE Scrum Quizzes.

What’s New now?

There are many changes made in the Scrum Guide 2020 but the most obvious or important ones are mentioned below.

Three Questions on Daily Scrum have been Eliminated:

In the previous Scrum guide, there were three questions on daily scrum that how your actions helped the development team in meeting the sprint goal. In the Scrum guide 2020, these questions have been eliminated. The purpose here is to enable the developers to adapt to any framework or structure and not bind them towards those three questions. Check out the tools used by Professional Scrum Master.

There’s no Development Team:

The next prominent change was that the development team got replaced with a new term which is the “developers”. The main purpose here is to eliminate the team within a team. There has always been a strange relationship between a product owner and the development team. So by changing the name to developers, everyone is responsible for delivering value and being responsible as one team and not just as the product owner. The team must be given the impression that they can challenge the decisions and focus on delivering value using their own brains as well and not just blindly follow what the product owner tells them to. You can also checkout CSM Practice test.

Introducing a New Term “Product Goal”:

The product goal is a whole new term that has been introduced in the Scrum guide 2020 this year. So yes, all those people who thought they knew all about Scrum now have to deal with this term as well and learn about it thoroughly. The relation of a product goal is with product backlog just like a sprint goal is related to the sprint backlog. The product goal describes your product backlog and gives a whole new perspective and direction to the Scrum team. With the concept of product goal in mind, the team can get to somewhere with Scrum and not just do Scrum. It also helps frame the Sprint goal and gives meaning to all the work that you have been doing.

Do you truly understand the difference between RUP vs Agile methodology?

Introduction to three Commitments:

In the older version of the Scrum guide, there was only one mention of “Commitment” which was represented by one of the five Scrum values. But now in the 2020 edition, this value encloses in its three commitments and each one of them is derived from one Artifact. These three artifacts now contain commitments to them which are elaborated below.

The product goal is the commitment to the product backlog.
Similarly, the sprint goal is the commitment to the sprint backlog.
Lastly, the definition of done is the commitment to the increment.

Thus these commitments exist in order to bring focus and transparency to each of the artifacts.

Self-Managing over Self-Organizing:

This is another important change that we thought you all should know. In the Scrum guide 2020, there is no more self-organizing development teams, well the Dev team is also no more. So according to this change, there will be a concept of a self-managing scrum team. It clarifies that the team is going to decide internally who does what, when, and how. This means that the single person or leader is not going to organize all the work on his own. Instead, everyone is going to put in some effort and become more responsible. You might also be interested in PSM Certification Dumps.

Sprint Planning re-Planned:

Since 2017, we have always talked about two parts of sprint planning, right? It is the “what” and “how”. But in Scrum Guide 2020, we are going to talk about three equally important topics to cover and these are.

No more Servant Leader:

Changes have been made to the description of the Scrum Master role and you can easily imagine the impact it will put on the Scrum master’s role. Precisely, now the Scrum Master will be accountable for establishing the Scrum as defined in the Scrum Guide 2020. With that, he/she will also be responsible for the Scrum team’s effectiveness. And apart from gaining accountability within the Scrum team, the Scrum masters are bound to serve the larger organizations. So we can say that the term servant leader is now replaced with a true leader who is going to serve. You can find out Scrum master salary stats at takethiscourse.

Simplification of Language:

To all those people who work in IT, the term developers might sound odd to them, right? Well, this is because we directly see a programmer behind it and not an engineer or a designer. But if we talk about other fields, it is easy to say that, that particular person has developed a marketing campaign. So in the Scrum guide 2020, there will be a simplification of language, and indirect words that refer to IT like testing, system, design, and requirement, etc have been removed a well. It’s always interesting to find out how do Agile and DevOps interrelate?

Conclusion:

So these are few but important changes made in Scrum guide 2020. Please visit here for a complete Scrum Guide PDF. Go through it in details, know your Scrum, and don’t forget to stay home, stay safe, and never stop learning.

Related Articles:

What's New in Scrum Guide 2020