The Scrum Values

This post was taken directly from the Scrum Alliance Website to see the original, click here

Scrum Values

In 2001, a group of 17 independent software development thinkers gathered in the mountains of Utah to talk about Agile methodologies. They worked to create a set of compatible values based on trust and respect for each other, and to promote organizational models centered on people, collaboration, and building communities in which they – and others – would want to work.

After much skiing, talking, relaxing, and eating, they arrived at four common values that led to the development of the Agile Manifesto, with the core values being:

Individuals and interactions

over processes and tools

Working software

over comprehensive documentation

Customer collaboration

over contract negotiation

Responding to change

over following a plan
Using these as a guidepost, additional Scrum values have been created, and continue to be developed and modified (in true Agile fashion). These five values are the foundation for a Scrum team’s processes and interactions:

Focus

Everyone focuses on the work of the Sprint and the goals of the Scrum Team.

Courage

Scrum Team members have courage to do the right thing and work on tough problems.

Openness

The Scrum Team and its stakeholders agree to be open about all the work and the challenges with performing the work.

Commitment

People personally commit to achieving the goals of the Scrum Team.

Respect

Scrum Team members respect each other to be capable, independent people.

Nokia Test By Jeff Sutherland (Full Transcript)

Notes taken from “Nokia Test: Where did it come from?”[1] (ScrumInc – Jeff Sutherland )

Full Transcript – Jeff Sutherland speaking for 6 minutes (watch video)

Everyone wants to know “How well are we doing and how do we get better?”

The teams want to know that, the leadership wants to know that, the management wants to know that. So, over the years we’ve developed a short test of a few simple questions that can give us a fix on “how well is this team doing?” It started at Nokia in Finland and so has come to be known as the “Nokia Test”.

There are 9 questions now in the Nokia test.

Continue reading “Nokia Test By Jeff Sutherland (Full Transcript)”

How to Launch a Scrum Team – The First Steps

Part one, the basics

Interviewing the Master of Scrum in Hardware Joe Justice –  a quick overview of how to get started (under 4 minutes!)

Step one: Run a four values retrospective (it’s actually 5! Here they are)  – the Agile four values – with the team saying, “what’s the gap?” and “what are we doing well already?”, so the context is typically our last week of work together and specific to the place we are scrumming.

We ask how we can increase the positives and close the gaps and the answers become the backlog for the work for the team and the Executive Action Team.

Step two: After Step one has been exhausted which is typically a big deal, then we have a more detailed approach, the Agile 12 Principles retrospective which is run the same way, and that generates the next part of the backlog.

Step three: take The Scrum Guide – the 3 roles, the 5 events, the 3 outputs (3-5-3) And ask, “How are we in each of these?” “Are we missing any?” Or, “are some not as good?” “Which are we doing well? How are we doing them well?” And then we list these out, the list comprising of ways to reinforce what we are doing well and ways to improve what we are not doing so well, and this becomes our organizational backlog, and at the end of that, we now have an agile scrum group. 

See the