Avi,
Thanks for asking. I think Id better blog what follows. :)
Post by ***@gmail.com [SCRUMDEVELOPMENT]I was also curious to see this announcement from scrum alliance today. Ron - could you share some "inside info" about this? Last I recall you were working on the agile atlas which was meant to be the scrum-alliance's defining document of scrum. Thanks, Avi
Strategically, the Scrum Alliance has been working toward there being a single agreed document among the big three Scrum organizations, Kens, Jeffs, as the founders, and the Scrum Alliance, the largest organization formed in support of Scrum. (And originally formed by Ken / Jeff, one should certainly say.)
The organizational split was brought about by the usual disagreements among people, not by any real disagreement about the ideas in and value of Scrum itself. It was, in my personal opinion, bad for everyone, even if it was inevitable given peoples differing goals.
Carol McEwan, as new blood in the Scrum Alliance, felt the call to be unified more strongly than any historical call to schism. At her direction, when we wrote the original Core, we took care to agree with the Scrum Guide in any particular, because we were not trying to split or further split Scrum, but to produce a stable document that the Scrum Alliance could use as a reference and as a basis for its teaching and testing.
Meanwhile, Carol reached out to people in Ken and Jeffs circles, and with their help, to Ken and Jeff, and together they all hammered out an agreement to mutually own, mutually author, and mutually support the Scrum Guide. The Core team has known about this effort for months: we talked about it with Carol at the Scrum Gathering, and some of us, prior to that.
I think it is fairly likely that the Core will remain as a sort of study guide for Scrum, as it contains some connecting material, like the references to the Agile Manifesto, and some specific material that supports Scrum Alliance training and testing. Thats just my guess, however. Of course, many authors will continue to write books and articles about Scrum.
My personal view has long been that all these named ideas, Scrum, XP, Crystal, and even the related bodies of knowledge in Lean, Kanban, and so on, are close relatives, different philosophers view of the same elephant. Thus my Tumblr on that subject. I believe that we are not well served by treating these different views as being in competition, and that most of the differences are differences of understanding, differences based on individuals personal preferences, and differences of business goals. My own focus to the extent that I can be said to have a focus is in helping people see that these ideas belong together, that it is all the same elephant.
So, anyway, this has been in development for at least months, years for some of us, and Im quite pleased about it. I expect that the human differences will continue to plague us and I hope that well continue to work on a broad and strong understanding of what were all about.
My thanks go to Carol, for having the vision and the courage to push this through, and to all the principals for seeing the wisdom of the idea and helping this happen.
Ron Jeffries
www.XProgramming.com
I'm not bad, I'm just drawn that way. -- Jessica Rabbit