Blog
Mert Özen's blog posts on software development, backend, frontend, and DevOps.
The Evolution of Scrum: From the 1986 HBR Paper to the 2020 Guide and the 2025 Expansion Pack
As of November 2026 the official definition of Scrum is still the Scrum Guide 2020; the Expansion Pack published in 2025 by Sutherland, Jocham and Coleman (latest v2026.1) does not carry Schwaber's signature and does not replace the official Guide. The post traces the path from the rugby approach of the 1986 HBR article through the 1995 OOPSLA presentation and the 2010-2017 revisions to the Product Goal, commitments and self-management of 2020.
What Is Scrum? Empiricism, Lean Thinking and the Problem Scrum Solves
Scrum is a purposefully incomplete, lightweight framework for generating value in complex problems: three accountabilities, five events, three artifacts and one commitment per artifact. The post explains the three pillars of empiricism, lean thinking and the five values through the Bookstore team's first Sprint preparation, and shows that velocity, story points, user stories and the three Daily Scrum questions are not in the Guide.