The Scrum Guide, Summarized: What It Actually Requires

The Scrum Guide is the short, free document in which Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland define Scrum, and as of October 1, 2026 the current edition is still the one from November 2020. It requires surprisingly little: one Scrum Team with three accountabilities, five events with timeboxes, three artifacts that each carry a commitment, and five values, all resting on empiricism. It does not require story points, velocity, user stories, a board, a burndown chart or a standup where everyone reports status. Those are practices teams add, and knowing which is which is the fastest way to fix a Scrum process that has grown heavy.

If you want the definition first, what is Scrum covers it in plain English. This page is about the document itself: what it says, and what it does not.

Which Scrum Guide is current: the 2020 edition

The 2020 Scrum Guide↗ (opens in a new tab) is published at scrumguides.org as a web page and as PDFs in many languages. The authors wrote the first version in 2010 and have revised it several times since. The revision notes↗ (opens in a new tab) describe the 2020 changes in six headings: the Guide became “Even Less Prescriptive”, the separate Development Team was folded into one Scrum Team, the Product Goal was introduced, each artifact got a commitment, “self-managing” replaced “self-organizing”, and Sprint Planning gained a third topic, “Why”. The notes add that the Guide “is now less than 13 pages.”

You may also see the Scrum Guide Expansion Pack↗ (opens in a new tab), a 2025 document by Jeff Sutherland, John Coleman and Ralph Jocham. It describes itself as “a comprehensive companion to the 2020 Scrum Guide” and adds guidance on topics such as product thinking and AI. It is a companion, not a new edition: the definition of Scrum is still the 2020 text.

What the Guide requires, in its own words

Most of the Guide explains purpose. The hard rules are few, and they are worth reading as written:

• The team: “Within a Scrum Team, there are no sub-teams or hierarchies.” It is “typically 10 or fewer people.”
• The Product Owner: “The Product Owner is one person, not a committee.”
• The Sprint: “They are fixed length events of one month or less to create consistency.” During it, “No changes are made that would endanger the Sprint Goal”.
• Who may stop a Sprint: “Only the Product Owner has the authority to cancel the Sprint.”
• The Daily Scrum: “The Daily Scrum is a 15-minute event for the Developers of the Scrum Team.”
• Sizing: “The Developers who will be doing the work are responsible for the sizing.”
• Quality: “Work cannot be considered part of an Increment unless it meets the Definition of Done.”
• The whole: “While implementing only parts of Scrum is possible, the result is not Scrum.”

The event timeboxes are maximums for a one-month Sprint: eight hours for Sprint Planning, four for the Sprint Review and three for the Sprint Retrospective, with the Guide adding that for shorter Sprints each event “is usually shorter.” Scrum ceremonies walks through all five events and what to do with a two-week Sprint.

Scrum artifacts and their commitments

The Guide names three artifacts, and since 2020 each one has a commitment that progress is measured against:

• Product Backlog, committed to the Product Goal: “an emergent, ordered list of what is needed to improve the product.”
• Sprint Backlog, committed to the Sprint Goal: the goal (why), the selected items (what) and the Developers’ plan (how).
• Increment, committed to the Definition of Done: “a concrete stepping stone toward the Product Goal.”

The two backlogs are set side by side in product backlog vs sprint backlog, and definition of done examples shows the third commitment in practice.

The five Scrum values

The Guide says that “Successful use of Scrum depends on people becoming more proficient in living five values: Commitment, Focus, Openness, Respect, and Courage.” It does not turn them into rules or ceremonies. They are the test you apply to the rules: a Daily Scrum where nobody mentions the blocker everyone can see fails openness, whatever its length.

What the Guide leaves to you

The Guide calls Scrum “purposefully incomplete, only defining the parts required to implement Scrum theory.” Everything about technique is left open: how you write backlog items, how you estimate, what tool you use, how you run each event inside its timebox. Even the Daily Scrum’s format is open, as long as it “focuses on progress toward the Sprint Goal and produces an actionable plan for the next day of work.”

What teams add themselves

None of the following appears in the Guide as a requirement. Each can be useful; none is Scrum.

• Story points. The Guide gives sizing to the Developers and names no unit. Points are a team habit; the Agile Alliance glossary↗ (opens in a new tab) describes them as a unit that emphasizes “relative difficulty over an absolute duration.” Do you need story points? weighs them up.
• Velocity. The Guide only says that knowing “past performance” helps the Developers forecast. Velocity, the points completed per iteration, is an add-on; sprint velocity explains why it should not become a target.
• The standup as a status meeting. The 2020 revision removed the three Daily Scrum questions. The event is for Developers to replan toward the Sprint Goal, not to report to a manager; daily standup has formats that keep it that way.
• Burndown charts. The Guide lists “burn-downs, burn-ups, or cumulative flows” as forecasting practices that “do not replace the importance of empiricism.” See burndown chart.
• User stories, task boards and two-week Sprints. All common, none required. The Guide sets an upper limit of one month and says nothing about how items are written or displayed.
• The word “ceremony”. The Guide says events, and uses “meetings” only to say events exist “to minimize the need for meetings not defined in Scrum.”

A checklist: is your Scrum the Guide’s Scrum?

Run this against your last two Sprints. Anything under “Added by us” is fine to keep, change or drop; anything under “Required” that is missing means you are running something else, which is also fine if you name it honestly.

REQUIRED BY THE 2020 SCRUM GUIDE                          yes/no
[ ] One Product Owner (a person, not a committee) orders the Product Backlog
[ ] A Product Goal exists and the team can say it in one sentence
[ ] Sprints are a fixed length of one month or less, back to back
[ ] Sprint Planning produced a Sprint Goal, selected items and a plan
[ ] Developers sized and selected the work themselves
[ ] A 15-minute Daily Scrum replans toward the Sprint Goal
[ ] Sprint Review is a working session with stakeholders, not a demo only
[ ] Sprint Retrospective picked the most helpful changes
[ ] A written Definition of Done; undone work went back to the backlog
[ ] Events stayed inside their timeboxes

ADDED BY US (keep, change or drop; none is Scrum)
[ ] Story points          [ ] Velocity chart       [ ] Burndown chart
[ ] User story format     [ ] Task board           [ ] Two-week Sprints
[ ] Status questions at the standup                [ ] Sprint reports for management

Running Scrum by the Guide on a simple board

fenbs is not a Scrum tool: a board has four fixed lanes, To Do, Next Up, In Progress and Completed, and no sprints, story points, velocity or burndown chart. That happens to match the Guide’s minimum well. To Do can hold the Product Backlog in priority order from 1 to 10, Next Up the Sprint selection, and Completed only what meets your Definition of Done. Write the Definition of Done on the Decisions and rules page, where a rule holds from now on, the decider is always a person, and every connected AI assistant reads it before starting work. Scrum board shows the full layout and its limits.