The Three Pillars of Empiricism in Scrum
Last updated: December 20, 2025 Read in fullscreen view
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“Scrum is founded on empiricism and lean thinking. Empiricism asserts that knowledge comes from experience and making decisions based on what is observed. Lean thinking reduces waste and focuses on the essentials.”
The three pillars of empiricism
The three pillars of empiricism are as follows:
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Transparency
This means presenting the facts as is. All people involved - the customer, the CEO, individual contributors - are transparent in their day-to-day dealings with others. They all trust each other, and they have the courage to keep each other abreast of good news as well as bad news. Everyone strives and collectively collaborates for the common organizational objective, and no one has any hidden agenda.
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Inspection
Inspection in this context is not an inspection by an inspector or an auditor but an inspection by everyone on the Scrum Team. The inspection can be done for the product, processes, people aspects, practices, and continuous improvements. For example, the team openly and transparently shows the product at the end of each Sprint to the customer in order to gather valuable feedback. If the customer changes the requirements during inspection, the team does not complain but rather adapts by using this as an opportunity to collaborate with the customer to clarify the requirements and test out the new hypothesis.
“Transparency enables inspection. Inspection without transparency is misleading and wasteful.”
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Adaptation
Adaptation in this context is about continuous improvement, the ability to adapt based on the results of the inspection. Everyone in the organization must ask this question regularly: Are we better off than yesterday? For profit-based organizations, the value is represented in terms of profit. The adaptation should eventually relay back to one of the reasons for adapting Agile - for example, faster time to market, increased return on investment through value - based delivery, reduced total cost of ownership through enhanced software quality, and improved customer and employee satisfaction.
Scrum works not because it has three roles, five events, and three artifacts but because it adheres to the underlying Agile principles of iterative, value-based incremental delivery by frequently gathering customer feedback and embracing change. This results in faster time to market, better delivery predictability, increased customer responsiveness, ability to change direction by managing changing priorities, enhanced software quality, and improved risk management.
Do you really need to follow all three Scrum pillars?
To put it briefly, you do. There's a lot to process here, but let's start with transparency. Of the three Scrum pillars, it is the most crucial. If the issue you are facing is unclear, you will undoubtedly inspect and adjust in the incorrect method, further straying from your intended course of action.
Sometimes, you can actually focus only on adapting—simply experimenting with some ideas and brainstorming new ways to develop the product. Then again, it will be necessary to carefully inspect and ask why you’re even trying something new. Maybe your team is bored with the current situation and needs a breath of fresh air?
As you can see, all three pillars are inseparable and strictly connected. You can’t have one without the others.
Working with scrum means developing a cutting-edge product to give your company a headstart on your competition. Scrum is sometimes used to manage projects: a predetermined scope is divided into iterations, and the scope is not intended to be changed while the project is being developed. Before development begins, while knowledge is at its lowest, all decisions are determined. In the event that new information is found throughout the development process, you can wind up wasting money and resources.
Important insights into the product, the market, and the customers that were discovered throughout development have also been purposefully overlooked because doing so would have required going against the original strategy.
Using empiricism and scrum well involves acting quickly to capitalize on learning for the benefit of your clients, business, and market position.
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