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Scrum vs Professional Scrum? What is the difference?

Last post 06:47 pm December 7, 2019 by Simon Mayer
4 replies
04:35 pm December 6, 2019

I am positive there is some difference between the terms Scrum and Professional Scrum but I can't find any resource where Professional Scrum is defined. Does anyone in the community know what the difference is? What is the significance of the word "Professional" and if there is a formal definition somewhere?


04:45 pm December 6, 2019

Is Professional Scrum not just a the term used for the courses taught by Scrum Trainers certified by Scrum.org ? 

ex. Someone may take the Professional Scrum Training course offered by Scrum.org in order to prepare me for my Professional Scrum Master 1 certificate exam? 

 


01:55 am December 7, 2019

Steve - In Stephanie's new Professional Scrum book Dave West has a foreword where he writes an answer to "What is Professional Scrum". I would recommend picking up this book.

Typically Mechanical Scrum gets compared with Professional Scrum, but I am not sure there is a standard definition. Mechanical Scrum is Scrum, and while all the Scrum events are being executed, Scrum Teams are just going through the motions. They're doing Scrum which is a god start but is it enough? Can they get more from Scrum? By living the Scrum values and principles, Professional Scrum starts to emerge. I've also seem others mention Professional Scrum teams leverage modern technical practices as well (ie. XP practices such as TDD, pairing, refactoring, CI/CD, etc.). Professional Scrum teams use empiricism to solve complex problems and have a relentless focus on delivering value to their customers.

 

 


02:58 am December 7, 2019

@Chris Belknap, Thanks, that was helpful.


06:47 pm December 7, 2019

Professional Scrum teams use empiricism to solve complex problems and have a relentless focus on delivering value to their customers.

I applaud the attempt to highlight the flaws of Mechanical Scrum, but what Chris described is essentially just Scrum, and it doesn't need a prefix.

By placing too great an emphasis on Professional Scrum, aren't we ultimately implying that by default, Scrum is unprofessional, does not make use of empiricism, does not help solve complex problems, and doesn't deliver value to customers?


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