What the Scrum Guide Doesn’t Say

As “bibles of an industry” go, the Scrum Guide is downright tidy. At 19 pages (including cover page and table of contents) and fairly few big words, the text itself is quite accessible. But of course, anyone who’s dug into it far enough to really implement Scrum knows, those easy-to-read words open a rabbit hole that goes deep. As the Guide says, Scrum is lightweight, simple to learn, and difficult to master.

Scrum is not a process, technique, or definitive method. Rather, it is a framework within which you can employ various processes and techniques.

My momma taught me that if you want to really understand what somebody thinks, you need to listen to what they say and what they don’t say. When it comes to processes and day-to-day operation of Scrum, there’s a LOT the Scrum Guide doesn’t say. Let’s look at a few of those.

Estimation

For a lot of teams, Scrum IS the mechanics of stories, points and velocities. But guess what? The Scrum Guide doesn’t specify that estimations are to be done using that method, or any particular method!

The Guide only mandates that estimates happen. How they are done is left up to the team. The section “Product Backlog” contains the following references to estimation:

Product Backlog items have the attributes of a description…