This part of our Scrum Basics Series will take a look at the Principles and Values Scrum is trying to implement in your company. For a start, I’d like to show you what the Agile Manifesto says about what agile development values:
„Individuals and interactions over processes and tools. Working software over comprehensive documentation. Customer collaboration over contract negotiation. Responding to change over following a plan.“
„That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.“
These lines express basically everything Scrum and agile development stand for. It’s a short but powerful summary and shows that implementing Scrum in your company goes much deeper than just changing development style in your software department.
Principles
In addition to this short summary the Agile Manifesto also lists twelve principles an agile company should follow. Here only a small selection:
“Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.
Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer’s competitive advantage.
Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale.
Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.
The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.
Like the fist quotes, also these principles show the deep impact of agile development within a company. A lot of points like “welcome changing requirements” or “business people and developers must work together daily” are not normal or even contrarian to companies developing projects with waterfall. The principles also show that Scrum teams have to be self-organised and self-improving, but are also empowered to make their own decisions. This requires a lot of trust from all other departments and the management in particular.
Values
In addition to the agile principles Scrum also brings five values. What are these values? What do they mean in detail and why are they important?
Focus
Focus means that the whole team is working on only one topic and that all expertise is available to solve the topic. Focussing on one thing at a time leads to early delivery and high quality. But also small things like focussing on the core problem or core topic in meetings to make them short and effective can change your daily work life.
Openness
It requires a lot of trust to speak up completely openly about anything that bothers you in front of your team or even your boss, but it also works the other way around. If everyone says openly what they are working on and where they have problems, this avoids misunderstandings, minimises risks and in the end it builds trust. This way everyone has a shared understanding of the product, how development is going and all work in the same direction.
Courage
To talk openly not only needs trust, but also (and especially if trust is missing) courage. But only if everyone has the courage to speak openly about challenges, the team can work on fixing them. It also means that you should openly speak about mistakes and not try to hide them. Everyone can make mistakes, we are just humans in the end, but the earlier you admit you made a mistake and involve the team in solving it, the smaller the impact of that mistake will be.
Commitment
Commitment is very important when it comes to self-organised Scrum teams. They decide on their own, how much they are going to solve within the next sprint. But it’s also their commitment to fight to reach the goal they set for themselves. It’s also in the direction of committing to a certain level of quality in the software. No matter how much pressure comes from the outside, the team needs to stay true to their commitment for quality.
Respect
Especially within a Scrum team the members need to respect each other. Every member should have an equal standing during discussions. It is not only the senior’s voice that matters. This value also means small things like showing up to meetings on time and let everyone speak their mind. Only if colleagues are respecting each other they can work together efficiently and build great products.
Those five basic values everyone in the Scrum team and their surroundings should live every day. Since April 2014 we have a chocolate trophy at ePages for people or teams who stood out in one of these values and got suggested for that by colleagues. Up until this day we have handed over 63 chocolates to colleagues and teams and some are collecting to get all five values. Let’s see who will achieve that first!
Related posts
- Scrum Basics: What is Scrum?
- Scrum Basics: Scrum Roles
- Scrum Basics: Scrum Meetings
- Scrum Basics: Estimating
- Scrum Basics: Practicing it
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