There are no ceremonies, and no grooming
The Guide says events, never "ceremonies". It says Product Backlog refinement, and describes it as an ongoing activity — not a sixth event, with no timebox and no fixed slot. "Grooming" was dropped from the vocabulary years ago.
Why it is like this
Five events is the complete list, and the Guide is explicit that each exists to enable transparency, inspection and adaptation. Adding a sixth recurring meeting and calling it Scrum is how a framework designed to reduce meetings acquires more of them.
Not to be confused with
A quibble about words. "Ceremony" implies something performed; the events are working sessions where decisions get made. And treating refinement as a scheduled event with the whole team present is one of the most common additions nobody notices making.
In practice
A recurring two-hour "backlog grooming ceremony" every Wednesday is an invention. Refining items as the team learns, whenever that is, is the Guide.
Source: The Scrum Guide, November 2020 (Schwaber & Sutherland) — Scrum Events, and Product Backlog. 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.
Say it back Check yourself
Name the five Scrum events. Then name three things people routinely call Scrum that appear nowhere in the Guide.
Answer out loud or in writing first, then open the points below.
The points a good answer makes
- The Sprint
- Sprint Planning
- Daily Scrum
- Sprint Review
- Sprint Retrospective
- Not in the Guide: story points, velocity, user stories, burndown charts, backlog grooming as an event, Scrum of Scrums, Sprint zero, epics, the three Daily Scrum questions, planning poker
None of the second list is forbidden — the framework is purposefully incomplete. The point is knowing which half of your process came from the Guide when someone argues that "Scrum says".