Not in the Scrum Guide

I collected some terms that do not appear in the Scrum Guide – and I have a feeling that to some, these might be quite surprising, as many of these terms have become a part of the folklore surrounding Scrum. Note that this is not meant as any kind of judgement on whether or not these terms or the concepts behind them are useful. Most of them are definitely useful. It is mostly meant as a reminder of how basic and lightweight the definition of Scrum actually is and how much flexibility we have in applying it.

These are some terms not included in the Scrum Guide:

• “User Story” – The Scrum Guide only refers to “Product Backlog Items”.
• “Definition of Ready” or “DoR” – The Scrum Guide states “Product Backlog items that can be Done by the Scrum Team within one Sprint are deemed ready for selection in a Sprint Planning event.” but does not say anything about the need for further rules to determine PBI readiness.
• “Story Points”
• “Estimates”
• “Velocity”
• “Burndown Charts” – While these are mentioned (along with burnup charts and cumulative flow diagrams, they are only mentioned as examples, not as a prescriptive part of the Scrum framework.
• “Ceremonies” – The Scrum Guide only refers to “Scrum Events”, not “Scrum Ceremonies”.
• “Task Board”, “Sprint Board” – Scrum does not prescribe a task board. It is not even mandatory to decompose PBIs into tasks.
• “Three Questions” (for the Daily) – In previous versions, the three questions were meant as an example for a typical Daily. In the 2020 version, the three questions are gone.
• “Stand-up”
• “Set the stage”, “Gather data”, “Generate insights”, “Decide what to do”, “Close the retrospective” – These retrospective phases are actually derived from the book “Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great” by Esther Derby and Diana Larsen.
• “Approval”, “Acceptance” – There is no process for the Product Owner to approve or accept PBIs as “Done”. PBIs are “Done” when they meet the Definition of “Done” (which could include an approval by the Product Owner, but that is not mandatory).