Scrum Values help you grow with Scrum
Last Thursday I attended Scrum Day Europe and saw Gunther Verheyen’s excellent talk about Scrum Values. The session encouraged me to complete an article I been working on for some time.
Scrum Values are essential for Scrum. But in the daily life of Scrum teams, they are often ignored. This is a bad thing. It is a sign the team is not doing as well as it could.
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Understanding why Scrum Values matter
People that learn about the Scrum Values for the first time generally have three types of reactions:
It is an aha moment. The Scrum Values are the missing piece to complete the Scrum puzzle.
It is considered to be a neat concept, but it doesn’t really sink in. People don’t know what to do with it.
It is seen as a theoretical and unpractical part of Scrum only to show Scrum is about humans.
Many people believe the Scrum Values are a warm-hearted part of Scrum, but hardly relevant for real-life Scrum teams. Or they see the Scrum Values as basic guidelines for life.
Transforming the Scrum Values to something generic, they become equivalent to phrases like: “Exercise regularly” or “Drive patiently”. Things that sound aspiring but are merely modern life catchphrases.
Treating Scrum Values like catchphrases reminds me of one of the most harrowing Radiohead songs, Fitter Happier. In this song, the singer Tom Yorke robotically reads a long list of societal advice (not drinking too much, no paranoia, etc…). He calls it the most upsetting thing he has ever written.
Often the Scrum Values are modern life catchphrases only.
But the Scrum Values aren’t catchphrases and they are too vital for Scrum to be ignored. Scrum Teams that treat the Scrum Values as catchphrase only miss out on the essence of Scrum.
Humanizing the workplace
Gunther Verheyen states that Scrum should humanize the workplace. But often, this doesn’t happen:
“Many people use Scrum to continue the rat race” — Gunther Verheyen
Organisations use the mechanics of Scrum to crank out features every two weeks. By doing so, they ignore that creating these product features calls for creative humans. A sure way to kill creativity is to have the team focus on producing regular output as if the team is mindlessly working at a conveyer belt.
Scrum shouldn’t be like this at all. For Scrum to work you need to, as Gunther puts it, humanize the workplace. This is why the Scrum Values are so vital. They are about human behaviours. About how a team works together and interacts with its stakeholders.
Scrum is built upon empiricism. Scrum has rules, accountabilities, events, and artifacts. With Scrum Values, Scrum comes to life.
With Scrum Values, Scrum comes to life.
Humanizing the workplace and creating value
Humanizing the workplace is always important. People shouldn’t be treated as resources, as if they are pencils or laptops. But in the world of Scrum, there’s even more reason to humanize the workplace than using common sense that people are people.
Scrum exists to create products of value in a complex environment. It requires teams to experiment and learn from experience. Scrum is based upon empiricism: transparency, inspection, and adaptation.
To paint a picture here’s are some examples of how Scrum Values impact empiricism.
For optimal transparency, openness and courage are key. A team could have worked with assumptions turning out to be wrong. Not meeting expectations may appear like a failure. In complex environments, however, what will happen is largely unknown. You need to learn from the results of your experiments.
The best way to learn is to be transparent about mishaps and be open about the things the team did that lead to these results. More team members will learn from failed experimentation if there is transparency. The team will increase learnings from others experiences and other teams’ experiences.
Inspection calls for focus and respect. As a colleague or any other stakeholder of the team, you respect them to be capable professionals. Everyone is focused on the same complex journey.
Adaptation calls for commitment and courage. Commitment is key to stick to the goal, to not run astray. Teams need to show courage to abandon a path that doesn’t bring them closer to their goals, despite the mental and financial investments made.
Self-organising teams need to be empowered to find out what works best. Without this empowerment, teams may be doing mechanical Scrum: they apply the rules of Scrum, but they play it safe and don’t address painful topics that hold them back. With Scrum values, you can ensure you don’t end up in mechanical Scrum.
Scrum Values — inspiring but unsettling
Each of the Scrum Values is inspiring, but also unsettling. They call for empowerment. But empowerment comes with responsibilities. And responsibilities can put people outside of their comfort zone.
The least unsettling Scrum Value is respect. Showing respect to another person is widely accepted as common sense. When people talk about Scrum Values being universal, they often have respect in mind.
Focus is also easily embraced. Many know the benefits of bringing focus to your work. That doesn’t mean that everyone applies this practice. Many work on multiple things at the same time. Others may be working on things that don’t bring them towards their goals. This is why it si important to regularly verify if the team has the focus.
Commitment is often misunderstood. Some see it as working extra hours to meet other people’s promises. But commitment is not about this. Doing your best to succeed within reason AND inform involved parties when important insights emerge is what it is about. Commitment is of the utmost importance for Scrum Teams.
Openness and courage often are the most challenging. They require an environment that allows people to be vulnerable. Within many organisations, this is not the case. But as I discussed earlier, there’s no transparency without openness and courage. And without transparency, there’s no empiricism. Without empiricism, there’s no way to understand if the team is delivering value.
Scrum Values make Scrum hard
Scrum Values are essential for Scrum Teams. They humanize the workplace. People aren’t resources. But Scrum Values also are vital to allow for transparency, inspection and adaptation.
Scrum Values aren’t platitudes. They aren’t fluffy.
But they are hard to apply. They call for a radically different way of working. Stakeholders of the Scrum Teams also need to embrace the Scrum Values.
Adopting the Scrum Values is a long journey. With inspection and adaptation, teams can grow in embracing the Scrum Values. Just like teams do with building their product and working with the Scrum processes. They need to work on applying and interpreting the Scrum Values consciously and continuously. This isn’t easy. But it is essential to be successful with Scrum.
Scrum Values aren’t platitudes. They aren’t fluffy. They are essential.