Common Myths and Complementary Practices

Many practices that people associate with Scrum are not in the Scrum Guide. User stories, story points, planning poker, velocity, burndown and burn-up charts, task boards, a Definition of Ready and the three Daily Scrum questions are all complementary practices. Teams may use them if they help; Scrum does not require any of them. The Scrum Guide only says that various practices exist to forecast progress, and that they do not replace the importance of empiricism — only what has already happened may be used for forward-looking decision-making.

Some common ideas actually conflict with Scrum. A "Sprint 0" for setup, a "hardening" or "stabilization" Sprint at the end, extending a Sprint to finish work, changing the Sprint Goal mid-Sprint, a Product Owner committee, a project manager assigning tasks to Developers, or presenting unfinished work at the Sprint Review all break Scrum's rules.

Velocity is a team's own forecasting aid. Comparing velocity across teams, or using it as a performance target, encourages gaming the numbers and damages transparency.

Study focus: when an answer says Scrum "requires" story points, a burndown chart, a task board or a specific Daily Scrum format, it is almost always wrong. The exam rewards knowing exactly what the Scrum Guide says — and what it deliberately leaves out.