TL; DR: Is There a Need for the Scrum Guide Expansion Pack?
The Scrum Guide Expansion Pack represents a fascinating contradiction in the agile world. While attempting to cure Scrum’s reputation crisis, it may actually amplify the very problems it seeks to solve. Let me explain what this means for practitioners dealing with the aftermath of failed Scrum implementations.
The Philosophical Shift: From Lightweight to Academic
The 2020 Scrum Guide deliberately embraced minimalism. Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland designed it as a “lightweight framework” that was “purposefully incomplete,” thus forcing teams to fill in the gaps with their intelligence and context. This approach was brilliant in its simplicity compared to competitors such as SAFe.