7 items that you might think are part of Scrum but aren’t
Scrum is a framework — not a set of practices
Several topics are often mixed up with Scrum, but aren’t actually part of Scrum. While some of these things can work perfectly with Scrum I find it important to mention that they in fact aren’t Scrum as it would limit your options with Scrum.
User Stories and Epics
The User Story has it’s origins in Extreme Programming. The term Epic was introduced by Mike Cohn. Scrum doesn’t use terms like ‘epic’ or ‘user story’. Scrum talks about Product Backlog Items. This doesn’t mean that you aren’t allowed to use these terms. Scrum is a framework and it gives you the room to use terms like Story and Epic. But you can use other terms/work in other ways as well.
Story points
As Story Points are related to Stories the logical conclusion is that Story Points also do not exist within Scrum. And indeed that is the case. Scrum does not prescribe how to estimate the Product Backlog Items. Story Point estimating is A way, not THE way. Other ways are, for example: counting Product Backlog Items, T-Shirt sizing, affinity estimating.
