Scrum · apply · about 10 minutes

All five events, and none of the Scrum

A team of nine has run "Scrum" for two years. Every morning they stand in a circle and each person tells the delivery manager what they did yesterday. Priorities come from a weekly "product council" of four stakeholders. The Sprint Goal on the board reads "complete sprint 61 scope". Wednesdays are a two-hour grooming ceremony. Twice this quarter a Sprint was extended by three days to finish. Their velocity chart is the main thing shown to management. A new engineer asks you, privately, whether this is Scrum.

Answer them. Then pick the one change you would make first, and say why that one.

Write your answer somewhere else — on paper, in a mail draft, out loud to someone. Then come back and mark it against the rubric. The rubric is disputable: if you think a line is wrong for your situation, you are probably right, and noticing that is worth more than the tick.

Mark it against the rubric

Names the committee as the breach that matters most — the Product Owner is one person The Product Owner is one person
Spots that the Daily Scrum is performed for a manager, so it inspects nothing and adapts nothing The Daily Scrum belongs to the Developers
Identifies "complete sprint 61 scope" as a What dressed as a Why, and what that costs them Scope is negotiable, the Sprint Goal is not
Calls the extended Sprints out: fixed length is the rule the cadence rests on The Sprint is a container
Notes that grooming-as-an-event and velocity-as-a-report are additions, not violations There are no ceremonies, and no grooming
Picks one change and justifies it, rather than listing all six — and does not say "this is not real Scrum" and stop A framework, purposefully incomplete

Read against The Scrum Guide, November 2020 (Schwaber & Sutherland) on 2026-10-16. Regulations and frameworks change; the date is there so you can tell whether this has kept up.

The Scrum Guide is published by Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland under CC BY-SA 4.0. These cards are independent commentary written in our own words, not a derivative of the Guide's text. ytyk.org is not affiliated with, endorsed by or licensed by Scrum.org, Scrum Alliance or the Guide's authors.