Scrum Guide 2020 — How Radical Is the Change From Self-Organisation To Self-Management?

On the power and deceptiveness of labels

The Scrum Guide 2020 has updates on many fronts. One of them is that as of now Scrum Teams are self-managing. This used to be self-organising. On the surface, this looks like a major change. The radicality of the change is confirmed when you compare the following two lines from the 2017 and 2020 guides:

“Self-organizing teams choose how best to accomplish their work, rather than being directed by others outside the team.” — Scrum Guide 2017

Versus:

“They [the Scrum Teams] are also self-managing, meaning they internally decide who does what, when, and how.” — Scrum Guide 2020

Reading these, the inevitable conclusion is that Scrum Teams now have more to say about their work:

• The Scrum Guide 2017 states that self-organising teams choose HOW to do their work.
• The Scrum Guide 2020 brings forward that self-managing teams determine who does WHAT, WHEN and HOW.

Unfortunately, it is not this simple. To clarify, I will do a more in-depth comparing the two Scrum Guide versions. I will explore the differences in explaining self-organisation and self-management. This will result in my verdict: do Scrum Teams indeed have more autonomy than before and what do the changes bring the teams?