Last week came across the new change of scrum Guide (2013 update). I personally like them, few ones I incorporated them long time ago to my way of work, but it was good that the scrum guide reinforce them. Other points very useful to apply sooner or later.
Here is the list of change and my comments:
“A section on Artifact Transparency has been added…”
I was convinced some time ago that one of the more important values are “Transparency” and “Visibility” (it applies if you are using scrum or not). For me it is very important be “transparent” and build teams with a lot of “visibility”(nothing new if you are an agile practitioner). Now, it is not only mentioned at the beginning of the guide as one of the pillars of scrum; it has a section: “Artifact Transparency”. The Scrum Master’s job is to work with the Scrum Team and the organization to increase the transparency of the artifacts.
“Sprint Goal” is formally added
Very useful to get the team with a focus during the sprint. It allows them to take decision if they need it based in their goal and PO input. When the PO and the team need to discuss about one injection, the goal helps to both side to keep the focus and maybe avoid the injection (some time it is into possible, but it helps for sure). You could find about “sprint goal” in few books and articles, but now, it is formally included in the scrum guide.
“The Product Backlog is refined rather than groomed”
I really like this one, “we refine our backlog”. I will introduce it as soon as I can to my teams and my vocabulary. Together with the idea of “story ready” and “story done”. Very good points. The first time I read about “ready” and ” done” was few days ago in “scrum shortcuts” book by Ilan Goldstein (yes, I bought it almost the same day it was published. And I read it in 3 days. Very easy-reading)
“The importance of the Daily Scrum as a planning event is reinforced”
Something very helpful and in my opinion, teams must use it. The daily stand-up is the meeting where team members plan their days. As SM/agile coach, we need to avoid “report” meeting or “soft” version of this meeting. When I said meeting is only answer the very famous and basic questions we learn long time ago: “What did we do yesterday?” What will we do today?” “Are you blocked?”. I agree that those questions help to build the team, but with the time, we really need to guide teams to use those 15 min in a better way. In my experience, some visual tool (whiteboard or big monitor) helps a lot to get better meetings.
“Sprint review meeting value reinforced: Review meeting = Collaborative meeting”
It is very important that all players (dev team, PO, stakeholders, SM….) understand well the idea behind the sprint review meeting. We need to guide teams to use it as a collaborative meeting.
You could find the full scrum guide here
Maybe there is something else, but so far, I am happy to see those changes. As I said, some of them I incorporated some time ago, but it is nice to see it in the scrum guide. for those ones really new for me, I love them.
Did you notice any interesting changes to the guide? or Did I miss something? If so, post them in the comments!
Thank you,
Omar