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Typo in the latest Scrum Guide?

Last post 05:57 pm September 24, 2018 by John Knoop
3 replies
10:03 pm August 28, 2018

The latest version of the Scrum Guide contains this sentence:

Various projective practices upon trending have been used to forecast progress, like burn-downs, burn-ups, or cumulative flows. These have proven useful. However, these do not replace the importance of empiricism.

Is this a typo? Since burndown charts the and CFD's only contain after-the-fact information such as number of tasks remaining and number of work items in each state, how is that not considered empirical?


04:00 pm August 29, 2018

Since burndown charts the and CFD's only contain after-the-fact information such as number of tasks remaining and number of work items in each state, how is that not considered empirical?

After what fact? Without the release of value a feedback loop cannot be closed, and hence there can be no empirical control.

If each item were to be released upon its completion, rather than at the end of the Sprint, then there would be more opportunity for empiricism.


06:18 pm August 29, 2018

You're not paying attention to the word "Replace". The point of this sentence is to tell the reader that while burn down charts and the like are good and beneficial to the team; they do not replace the importance of empiricism. In other words, the team still needs to have their ceremonies, they still need to have hard conversations in order to continue to improve.


02:02 pm September 23, 2018

Ian,

Sorry for late reply, I assumed I would get an e-mail notification when someone replies :)

In my original post, "after the fact" means after the PBI has passed the definition of done. Otherwise it won't move to the next state in the CFD. There is no other information in that chart than what has already happened. That's why I found the sentence in the guide to be peculiar.


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