Why Do the Five Scrum Values Matter?

Scrum is usually explained through its roles, events and artifacts. Yet the Scrum Guide says clearly that Scrum’s success depends on how well people live five values: commitment, focus, openness, respect and courage. Without the values, Scrum events become empty rituals. For Scrum’s overall structure, see What is Scrum?

The five values and what they look like in the field

1. Commitment

The Scrum Team commits to achieving its goals and to supporting each other. Commitment here doesn’t mean “finish everything in the Sprint, no matter what”; it means dedication to the Sprint Goal, to quality and to your teammates.

When it’s missing: Sprint Goals are often missed, work is left half-done, and “my part is done” becomes the norm.

2. Focus

The team’s primary focus is the work of the Sprint, to make the best possible progress towards its goals. Starting too many things at once is focus’s biggest enemy.

When it’s missing: new work is added constantly mid-Sprint, team members are split across several projects, and work in progress grows while finished work doesn’t.

3. Openness

The Scrum Team and its stakeholders are open about the work and the challenges. Sharing bad news early is always more valuable than sharing good news late.

When it’s missing: risks are hidden until the last minute, the Daily Scrum turns into a status report, and real problems aren’t discussed in retrospectives.

4. Respect

Scrum Team members respect each other as capable, independent people, and are respected as such by the people they work with.

When it’s missing: walls go up between specialisms (“testing is your job”), decisions are made over the team’s head, and certain people dominate meetings.

5. Courage

Scrum Team members have the courage to do the right thing and work on tough problems. Telling stakeholders “we can’t do this in this Sprint” takes courage too.

When it’s missing: the same problems come up in every retrospective but nobody names them, and people quietly say “yes” to unrealistic commitments.

Why do the values matter so much?

Scrum’s three pillars are transparency, inspection and adaptation. That loop only works when the values are lived:

• Without openness and courage there is no transparency; problems stay invisible.
• Without respect, inspection turns into blame.
• Without focus and commitment, decisions to adapt never get implemented.

How to strengthen the values

• Make the values a retrospective topic. Ask the team to score each value from 1 to 5 and talk about the lowest-scoring one.
• Turn them into behaviours. Instead of “we’ll be open”, agree on concrete things such as “we’ll raise risks in the Daily Scrum”.
• Make sure leaders set the example. If managers punish bad news, openness and courage will never grow. We discuss this in Leadership in Scrum.
• Limit work in progress for focus. Making the number of open items visible exposes focus problems quickly.

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Related: What is a Sprint?, Sprint Retrospective tips. To run a values workshop with your teams, have a look at our training and coaching.