Scrum Cheat Sheet - click for larger image

Often tasked with explaining Scrum to people new to it, we have debated thoroughly about the essentials of Scrum. What should you focus on? In a short presentation you do not get the luxury of being exhaustive and tailoring the explanation to the person you talk to is a great strategy but when speaking to a larger audience not always an option.

Well, a quick Internet search answers the question with a Scrum Cheat Sheet. It sums up the key elements in Scrum without getting you bogged down in details. Of course this is not enough to teach someone Scrum but it can serve as a great conversation starter.

There are several of the short points on the cheat sheet that deserves highlighting even to functioning Scrum teams and that is a testimony to the quality of the points.

The two points that are actually highlighted with a different color are some of the vaguer points about Scrum: “DONE” = potentially shippable and Visibility+flexibility = Scrum. Not neccesarily the MOST important points about Scrum but maybe the author of the cheat sheet has some experiences that makes these points especially important to her.

Personal experience makes me focus on the following:

• the responsibility of the Product Owner,
• that items on the product backlog can be added by ANYONE,
• that functionality not done is not shown at the sprint review

I would probably have added to the part about retrospectives that they are not about assigning blame (a simple but in practice difficult rule). The explanation about story points is also a bit off compared to my experience and I would have mentioned planning poker, but I can live with the current form of the cheat sheet and applaud the author for making it. Nicely done!

What would you have highlighted? Does the Scrum cheat sheet match your take on Scrum?