Photo by Tom Hermans on Unsplash.
The agile community just received two significant new resources: the Scrum Guide Expansion Pack and the Open Guide to Kanban. After reviewing both, I’m questioning whether more comprehensive always means more valuable.
The Irony We’re Facing
Here’s what struck me most: these new guides violate a core agile principle—the art of maximizing the amount of work not done.
The original Scrum Guide (2020) succeeds precisely because it’s 13 pages that busy practitioners actually read. Now we have an expansion pack covering Product-focused outcomes, Complexity Thinking, Systems Theory, OODA loops, AI integration, Beyond Budgeting, and more.
It’s good and relevant content of course, but are we solving the right problem?
The real challenge isn’t more theory—it’s changing mindset and habits. Adding comprehensive guides won’t transform teams struggling with basic collaboration or leaders resistant to empirical decision-making.
What I’m Seeing in Practice
The New Additions Include:
- Enhanced Product focus and Definition of Outcome Done
- AI tool integration guidance
- Role changes
- Community-driven implementation experiences
- Flow optimization principles and practical Flow metrics
- Comprehensive coverage of theories and scenarios
The Challenge:
- Target Audience Mismatch: Will newcomers engage with lengthy academic documents? Will experienced practitioners find value in concepts they already know from other sources?
- Decision Fatigue: Multiple guides create confusion about which path to follow
- Complexity Creep: We’re adding comprehensive treatises to frameworks that succeeded through simplicity
- Flow vs. Documentation: Does more documentation about Flow actually improve it?
- Theory vs. Practice: Teams struggling with basic agile adoption need behavioral change, not more comprehensive theory
Both documents face a fundamental tension: the comprehensive approach may paradoxically reduce their practical impact.
Why the Originals Still Win
The established guides work because they provide sufficient structure without overwhelming detail:
- Scrum Guide (2020): Concise, authoritative, widely adopted
- The Kanban Guide (2025): Clear methodology with practical focus
They serve as definitive references that practitioners can quickly digest and apply—exactly what busy professionals need.
My Recommendation
For Agile Leaders: Focus on improving existing resources rather than creating new ones. Ask “What’s the minimum needed to be maximally helpful?“ instead of “What else can we include?“
For Practitioners: Start with foundational guides. Use new resources selectively for specific challenges, not wholesale replacement. The most valuable learning combines core guides with quality literature, practical experience, and peer learning.
The Bottom Line
These new documents may find their place as specialized references rather than primary resources. But let’s be honest—these additions are already covered in existing agile literature.
The real question: Are we helping teams become more agile, or are we just creating more documentation to manage? I touched this and related topics in my Uncovering Agile and Scrum or Kanban - A False Equivalence articles.
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: Most agile transformations fail not because of insufficient documentation, but because of resistance to changing established habits and mindsets.
What’s your experience? Do comprehensive resources help or hinder your team’s Way of Working in practice? As a leader, have you found value in these new guides, or do you stick with the originals?