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Card 14 of 15 What the Guide does not say ●●● Sharp edge

Scope is negotiable, the Sprint Goal is not

The Sprint Goal is the single objective for the Sprint, created in Sprint Planning and added to the Sprint Backlog. As the Developers work, if the work turns out different from what they expected, they collaborate with the Product Owner to negotiate the scope of the Sprint Backlog without affecting the Sprint Goal.

Why it is like this

This is the trade the Sprint makes: the team commits to an outcome rather than to a list, so that discovering the list was wrong is a normal event rather than a failure.

Not to be confused with

A ban on changing anything mid-Sprint. Scope moves freely by agreement with the Product Owner. What is protected is the Goal — and the Guide adds that no change should be made that would endanger it.

In practice

Dropping two of five items because a third turned out to be harder, while still meeting the Goal, is Scrum working. Adding an unrelated urgent item that puts the Goal at risk is not.

Source: The Scrum Guide, November 2020 (Schwaber & Sutherland) — Commitment: Sprint Goal. Read on .

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.

Predict Check yourself

Mid-Sprint, a stakeholder asks for an unrelated urgent feature. The Developers say yes and drop two items that serve the Sprint Goal. What happened?

  1. A change that endangers the Sprint Goal — the Guide says no such change should be made; the honest options are to decline, or for the Product Owner to cancel the Sprint.
  2. Normal scope negotiation, which the Guide explicitly permits.
  3. A violation, because scope cannot change inside a Sprint at all.
  4. Acceptable, provided the Scrum Master approves it.
Show the answer

A change that endangers the Sprint Goal — the Guide says no such change should be made; the honest options are to decline, or for the Product Owner to cancel the Sprint.

Scope and Goal are two different things. Trading scope that serves the Goal for work that does not is how a Sprint becomes a two-week queue.