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I would add one small clarification to the Sprint Review: when it is practical and relevant to the product, the Scrum Team should seek direct perspectives from customers or users. That would make the feedback loop more explicit without turning customer attendance into a new Scrum requirement.
What does the Scrum Guide currently say about the Sprint Review?
The current official English Scrum Guide is the November 2020 edition, authored by Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland. The official Scrum Guide download page identifies that edition as current; its HTML version is a direct port of the PDF.
The Guide describes the Sprint Review as an event for the Scrum Team and stakeholders to inspect the Sprint’s outcome, discuss changes in the environment, and collaborate on what to do next. It is a working session, not merely a presentation. The Guide does not, however, explicitly call for seeking direct customer or user perspectives as part of that collaboration.
That distinction matters: inviting stakeholders and inspecting an outcome can support useful feedback, but the Guide does not make direct contact with customers or users a stated part of the Review. My proposed edit would clarify a useful source of evidence; it would not change the event into a mandatory customer meeting.
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What one change would make the Guide more useful?
Add a short customer-feedback clarification
I would add a sentence to the Sprint Review description along these lines: When practical and relevant to the product, the Scrum Team should seek direct perspectives from customers or users to inform its discussion of the outcome and possible future adaptations.
The wording deliberately says “seek” rather than requiring customers or users to attend. Teams could gather their perspectives in different ways, and the Guide need not prescribe a particular research method, meeting format, or frequency. The useful change is to make customer evidence an explicit consideration when the team and stakeholders inspect what was produced and decide what may need to change.
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Why this is the strongest single edit
The Guide defines Scrum as “a lightweight framework that helps people, teams and organizations generate value through adaptive solutions for complex problems.” Its theory rests on empiricism and lean thinking, with transparency, inspection, and adaptation as its pillars. Customer and user perspectives can help teams inspect whether an outcome addresses a real need and adapt based on evidence, rather than relying only on internal assumptions.
This proposal also fits the existing framework. The Scrum Team has three accountabilities—Developers, Product Owner, and Scrum Master—and is described as cross-functional and self-managing. Scrum has the Sprint and four other formal events; the Sprint Review is already the event for inspecting the outcome and considering future adaptations. A small clarification there strengthens an existing feedback loop rather than adding a new event or accountability.
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It also connects the Review to the Guide’s three artifact commitments: the Product Goal for the Product Backlog, the Sprint Goal for the Sprint Backlog, and the Definition of Done for the Increment. Direct customer or user perspectives can help inform product direction and future choices, while the Guide’s existing accountabilities and commitments remain unchanged.
How should a proposed change be judged?
A useful edit should close a meaningful gap, improve empiricism and value feedback, and preserve the Guide’s deliberate brevity and room for context. The customer-feedback clarification performs well on those three tests:
- It closes a specific gap: the Review explicitly includes stakeholder collaboration, but the Guide does not explicitly mention seeking direct customer or user perspectives.
- It reinforces evidence-based adaptation: perspectives from people who use or receive the product can contribute evidence about the outcome and what to do next.
- It stays narrow: one conditional sentence signals the value of that evidence without prescribing who must attend or how teams must collect it.
John Coleman, writing on Scrum.org about the 2020 Guide revision, argued for more customer-centricity and outside-in thinking. That is his practitioner commentary, not evidence of a broad consensus or an endorsement by the Guide’s authors. The proposal here is my own judgment about a modest clarification that fits the Guide’s existing purpose.
Why not make customer participation compulsory?
A compulsory attendance rule would be too prescriptive. Direct participation may be difficult or inappropriate in some contexts, and a team may have other relevant customer evidence. The Guide says it is purposefully incomplete: it defines only the parts required to implement Scrum theory, while processes, techniques, and methods may be used within the framework. Schwaber and Sutherland write, “Such tactics for using within the Scrum framework vary widely and are described elsewhere.”
That design argues for guidance to seek customer evidence where it helps, not a universal process. The change should preserve teams’ ability to decide how to obtain relevant perspectives in their own setting.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Would this change rewrite Scrum?
No. It would clarify one consideration within an existing event, not alter Scrum’s structure. The Guide says, “Each element of the framework serves a specific purpose that is essential to the overall value and results realized with Scrum.” It also says the Guide’s tactics vary widely. A customer-feedback sentence should therefore support the purpose of the Sprint Review without prescribing the local tactic.
The November 2020 Guide remains the official English edition identified on Scrum Guides’ version page. The proposed sentence is not part of that edition and should not be treated as an existing Scrum rule. There is also no quantified evidence in the cited Guide or Scrum.org commentary establishing how much this edit would improve outcomes, so it is best understood as a reasoned proposal rather than a measured intervention.
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