A department is choosing an approach for a product where both the requirements and the technology are poorly understood and keep changing as the team learns. Someone argues for Scrum "because it is founded on empiricism". What does founding an approach on empiricism actually commit the team to?
Professional Scrum Master I, objective 1. Understanding and applying the Scrum framework easy
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The options
Correct Deciding from what has actually been observed so far, on the understanding that knowledge comes from experience
Correct. Empiricism is a claim about where knowledge comes from, and Scrum turns it into a cadence: every Sprint produces observations, and the next decision is made from them rather than from the original assumption.
Not correct Producing a detailed plan for the whole product before development starts, then tracking variance against it
Wrong, and this is the assumption empiricism was chosen to replace. A defined-process plan only works when the important unknowns can be resolved on paper up front, which is exactly what is not true of complex work.
Not correct Documenting every decision thoroughly so that an audit can reconstruct how the team got here
Wrong. Record keeping is not the same as deciding from evidence. A fully documented plan built on guesses is still built on guesses, and writing it down does not make the guesses observations.
Not correct Letting each Developer choose their own way of working, since no process can be defined in advance
Wrong. Empiricism concerns the basis for decisions, not the absence of structure. Scrum is deliberately firm about its events and artifacts precisely because they are the machinery that produces the evidence.
Why
Scrum rests on empiricism and lean thinking: knowledge comes from experience, decisions are made from what is observed, and anything that is not essential is stripped out. The useful test is what your plan is for. If it is a forecast that evidence is expected to correct at least once a Sprint, that is empiricism. If it is a commitment that evidence is expected to conform to, it is not.
Where this comes from
- Cited
- Scrum Guide section Scrum Theory
- What it says
- Empiricism asserts that knowledge comes from experience and making decisions based on what is observed.
Practise this
Reading one question is not practice. The trainer will draw a set from objective 1 and space the ones you get wrong.
Practise Professional Scrum Master I
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