Alistair Cockburn has been sharing this distillation of Scrum in a recent talk called “Returning to the Heart of Agile“.  I really like the simplicity of this description since it recalls that Scrum is a simple framework.

1. Deliver (or demo) each Sprint, with a preference for delivery.
2. Management creates the cross-functional teams and then the Team decides everything else.
3. Inspect-and-adapt every day.
4. The ScrumMaster is the person with spare capacity who removes impediments so the best programmers, designers, UX specialists, tech writers, etc. can focus on their work.
5. One only person speaks to the Team about priorities, needs and requirements and they are called the Product Owner.

As a co-creator of the Agile Manifesto, Alistair has been thinking a lot about the evolution of Agile practices over the last fifteen years and has become concerned with all the extra stuff that has accreted onto Agile.  To help remind people of what lies at the roots of Agile, he has distilled all of Agile into these four key concepts – Deliver, Collaborate, Reflect and Improve – naming this The Heart of Agile.  Of course, Alistair brings our community another very interesting concept worth exploring.