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Card 2 of 15 Theory — what Scrum is ●●○ Working knowledge

A framework, purposefully incomplete

Scrum is a lightweight framework, not a methodology or a process. The Guide says it is purposefully incomplete: it defines only the parts needed to make empiricism work, and you supply the practices, techniques and tools that fill the gaps.

Why it is like this

A complete method would have to assume a domain. Leaving the middle empty is what lets the same framework wrap a trading platform and a marketing site — and it moves the responsibility for engineering practice back onto the team, where the Guide wants it.

Not to be confused with

Permission to use the parts you like. The Guide is explicit that Scrum's elements are immutable: implementing only parts of Scrum is possible, but the result is not Scrum. Incomplete and optional are not the same word.

In practice

Scrum says nothing about how you test, estimate or branch. It does say that if you drop the Sprint Retrospective, you no longer have Scrum — the first is a gap, the second is a deletion.

Source: The Scrum Guide, November 2020 (Schwaber & Sutherland) — Definition of Scrum, and End Note. 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

A team runs every Scrum event but has no Product Owner; a committee decides priorities. In the Guide's terms, what are they doing?

  1. Not Scrum — the elements are immutable, and dropping one means the result is not Scrum however complete the rest is.
  2. Scrum, tailored — the framework is purposefully incomplete, so parts may be replaced.
  3. Scrum, as long as the committee meets every Sprint.
  4. Scrum at the team level but not at the organisation level.
Show the answer

Not Scrum — the elements are immutable, and dropping one means the result is not Scrum however complete the rest is.

"Purposefully incomplete" is about what Scrum does not specify. What it does specify, it calls immutable — and the Product Owner being one person is one of those things.