[daanlo]

I am a big fan of scrum precisely because of the word commitment (I hand't realized it was removed). Forecast means we need to use a larger estimate next time. Commitment means: "how can we still get this live". In a good culture the answer to this should rarely be work extra hours or reduce code quality - it should be reduce scope of functionality. Without the commitment you often get micro feature creep, where a bunch of non-essential micro features are added. A bit like this (https://lawsofux.com/parkinsons-law.html). It is also the obvious moment in time to tell a product owner "we need to remove functionality x or not ship". Without the commitment that important conversation is never had. In my experience micro & macro feature creep is one of the biggest issues in sw development. Obviously you can still do the above with the word forecast, but forecast empowers you less to actually change anything (apart from better aka higher estimates next Sprint). On a general note: I feel scrum is often misused to "manage" engineering teams, when it is really a productivity tool that the team should use for itself.

[brightball]

Depending on the size or the organization, that word commitment can create numerous issues.

It can keep teams from collaborating because of a need to finish their commitments first, effectively blocking the other teams and delaying actual delivery of the product. You can see the same issues in customer support requests. The second that somebody decides to measure completed sprint commitments, you are in deeeeeep trouble because it forces people to low ball to hit that number. It removes your ability to pivot.

The entire concept of sprint commitments in a moderately sized team is borderline destructive.

This change is the best news about software development I’ve read in YEARS.