A quick 60 second overview of the changes that have just been announced in November to the scrum guide, which is a document describing an agile framework for a development process that is commonly adopted in the industry.

The last version of the guide was released in 2017 and this guide include 7 main areas of change. Unusually for an update the document has got smaller by 5 pages with a reduction in complexity and prescription. The key thing is it is still scrum as we know it.

A new addition is the product goal, which is the main goal of the product. This is called a commitment and the terminology allows the sprint goal and definition of done to be clearer in how they relate to their respective artifacts.

The daily scrum stand-up has changed in that the framework is no longer prescribing the 3 questions (done, to do, impediments). Of course they can still be done but the new approach means other options can be used.

The terminology has been changed to strengthen the concept of a single team, the phrase “development team” has been dropped to remove the team in a team concept. Instead it is a single team consisting of developers, scrum master and product owner.
The team is now also self-managing rather than self optimising.

And a 3rd question has been added to sprint planning, “why is the this sprint valuable?“, adding a reason to the sprint.
The Full 2020 Scrum Guide
You can read the full guide at https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html
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