103 - Scrum Values
Goal
Understand the Scrum Values as the behavioural foundation of Scrum by exploring how they influence collaboration, decision-making, transparency, and continuous improvement within Scrum Teams.
By the end of this chapter, readers should understand that Scrum Values are not abstract ideals or soft skills, but practical behaviours that enable empirical product development, effective teamwork, and continuous delivery of customer value.
Reading Time
| Level | Estimated Time |
|---|---|
| Quick Overview | 15 min |
| Complete Reading | 75–90 min |
| Including References | 110–130 min |
Mind Map
Scrum Values
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├── Commitment
│
├── Focus
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├── Openness
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├── Respect
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├── Courage
│
├── Team Behaviour
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├── Collaboration
│
├── Empiricism
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└── Customer Value
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
Many teams adopt Scrum by implementing its events, roles, and artifacts.
They schedule Sprint Planning, Daily Scrums, Sprint Reviews, and Retrospectives.
They maintain Product Backlogs and define Sprint Goals.
Yet some of these teams still struggle with poor collaboration, limited transparency, low trust, and resistance to change.
The missing element is often not another Scrum practice.
It is behaviour.
Scrum was designed with the assumption that teams operate in environments where uncertainty is unavoidable.
Learning from uncertainty requires more than process.
It requires openness to feedback, respect for different perspectives, the courage to challenge assumptions, commitment to shared goals, and the discipline to remain focused on what matters most.
These behaviours are captured by the five Scrum Values.
Rather than acting as aspirational principles, the Scrum Values create the cultural environment in which empirical process control can succeed.
Without them, Transparency becomes superficial.
Inspection becomes defensive.
Adaptation becomes difficult.
Understanding the Scrum Values therefore means understanding how effective Scrum Teams behave when solving complex problems together.
2. Why Scrum Values Exist
🎯 Core Idea
Scrum Values create the behavioural foundation that enables empirical learning.
Processes define how work is organized.
Values influence how people behave while performing that work.
Scrum recognizes that successful product development depends not only on effective practices but also on the behaviours that support collaboration, trust, and continuous learning.
Without shared values, even well-designed Scrum practices lose much of their effectiveness.
2.1 Values Shape Behaviour
Every decision made by a Scrum Team reflects underlying behaviours.
For example:
- Teams openly discuss problems.
- Developers ask for help.
- Product Owners welcome feedback.
- Scrum Masters challenge ineffective practices.
- Stakeholders collaborate constructively.
These behaviours cannot be created by ceremonies alone.
They emerge from shared values.
The Scrum Values provide a common behavioural foundation that guides everyday interactions and decision-making.
Rather than prescribing detailed rules, Scrum encourages teams to develop behaviours that support learning and customer value.
📖 Scrum Guide Perspective
"Successful use of Scrum depends on people becoming more proficient in living five values: Commitment, Focus, Openness, Respect, and Courage."
The values are not optional additions to Scrum. They influence how every Scrum role, event, artifact, and commitment is applied.
2.2 Culture Enables Empiricism
Empirical process control depends upon Transparency, Inspection, and Adaptation.
These three pillars cannot exist without an appropriate team culture.
For example:
- Transparency requires Openness.
- Inspection requires Respect.
- Adaptation requires Courage.
- Continuous improvement requires Commitment.
- Sprint Goals require Focus.
Without these behaviours, empirical learning becomes increasingly difficult.
Teams may hide problems.
Feedback becomes defensive.
Mistakes remain unaddressed.
Opportunities for improvement are missed.
The Scrum Values therefore act as behavioural enablers for Empiricism.
They create an environment where learning becomes possible.
2.3 Beyond Ceremonies
Many organizations successfully implement Scrum ceremonies while struggling to achieve Agile outcomes.
The reason is often cultural rather than procedural.
Scheduling a Sprint Retrospective does not guarantee improvement.
Holding a Sprint Review does not guarantee meaningful customer feedback.
Conducting a Daily Scrum does not automatically improve collaboration.
The effectiveness of every Scrum event depends upon the behaviours demonstrated by the people participating in it.
This explains why organizations with identical Scrum processes often achieve very different results.
Frameworks define practices.
Culture determines whether those practices actually work.
Scrum Values and Empiricism
The relationship between the Scrum Values and Empirical Process Control can be visualized as follows:
Scrum Values
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Healthy Team Behaviour
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Transparency
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Inspection
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Adaptation
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Continuous Learning
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Customer Value
The values influence behaviour.
Behaviour enables Empiricism.
Empiricism enables continuous improvement.
Continuous improvement creates customer value.
🔗 How These Concepts Work Together
Values influence behaviour.
Behaviour shapes collaboration.
Collaboration enables Transparency.
Transparency supports Inspection.
Inspection enables Adaptation.
Together, these concepts explain why Scrum Values are fundamental to successful empirical product development.
🤝 Culture Insight
Frameworks define practices.
Values determine whether those practices actually work.
🧩 Concept Connection
The previous chapter explained how Scrum learns through Empiricism.
This chapter explains how Scrum Teams behave so that empirical learning becomes possible.
3. The Five Scrum Values
🎯 Core Idea
The Scrum Values create the behaviours that enable empirical product development.
They are not abstract ideals or personality traits. They are practical behaviours that allow Scrum Teams to collaborate effectively, learn continuously, and deliver customer value.
Each Scrum Value supports both the people within the team and the empirical process upon which Scrum is built.
Together, they create a culture where learning becomes possible.
Commitment
Commitment is often misunderstood as committing to a fixed scope or delivery date.
In Scrum, commitment means dedicating oneself to achieving the team's shared goals while continuously learning and adapting.
Teams commit to:
- The Sprint Goal.
- Product Goals.
- Continuous improvement.
- Delivering value.
- Supporting one another.
Commitment creates accountability without preventing adaptation.
As new evidence emerges, teams may change their plans while remaining committed to achieving valuable outcomes.
Focus
Software teams constantly face competing priorities.
New requests, production incidents, stakeholder demands, and technical challenges can easily fragment attention.
Focus enables Scrum Teams to concentrate on the work that creates the greatest value.
Focus encourages:
- Clear priorities.
- Reduced context switching.
- Better Sprint execution.
- Faster learning.
- Higher quality outcomes.
By limiting attention to the most important work, teams maximize both productivity and customer value.
Openness
Empirical learning depends upon honesty.
Teams must be willing to openly discuss:
- Progress.
- Risks.
- Failures.
- Assumptions.
- Customer feedback.
Openness encourages transparency and reduces the likelihood that important information remains hidden.
Without openness, inspection becomes unreliable because decisions are based on incomplete or inaccurate information.
Respect
Complex product development depends upon diverse perspectives.
Developers, Product Owners, Scrum Masters, designers, testers, architects, and stakeholders all contribute valuable knowledge.
Respect enables constructive collaboration by encouraging teams to:
- Listen actively.
- Value different viewpoints.
- Assume positive intent.
- Share ownership.
- Learn from one another.
Respect creates an environment where disagreement improves decisions rather than damaging relationships.
Courage
Empirical product development often requires difficult conversations.
Teams must have the courage to:
- Challenge assumptions.
- Admit mistakes.
- Raise risks.
- Say "no" when necessary.
- Experiment with new ideas.
- Change direction when evidence demands it.
Courage enables adaptation.
Without it, teams continue following outdated plans even after discovering better alternatives.
Scrum Values at a Glance
| Scrum Value | Enables |
|---|---|
| Commitment | Ownership and accountability |
| Focus | Clear priorities and better outcomes |
| Openness | Transparency and honest feedback |
| Respect | Collaboration and psychological safety |
| Courage | Adaptation and continuous improvement |
🔗 How These Values Work Together
Commitment aligns the team around shared goals.
Focus concentrates effort.
Openness creates transparency.
Respect strengthens collaboration.
Courage enables adaptation.
Together, these values create the behavioural foundation that allows Scrum Teams to learn continuously and deliver valuable products.
🤝 Culture Insight
Scrum succeeds because of the behaviours it encourages—not because of the ceremonies it prescribes.
4. Scrum Values in Modern Software Engineering
🎯 Core Idea
The Scrum Values extend far beyond Scrum itself.
They influence modern engineering culture, leadership, product development, and organizational learning.
Many high-performing technology organizations demonstrate behaviours remarkably similar to the Scrum Values, even when they do not explicitly use Scrum.
Psychological Safety
Psychological Safety describes an environment where people feel comfortable speaking honestly without fear of blame or embarrassment.
This closely aligns with:
- Openness.
- Respect.
- Courage.
Teams with strong psychological safety are more likely to:
- Report problems early.
- Share ideas openly.
- Admit mistakes.
- Learn faster.
- Innovate continuously.
Empirical learning depends upon psychological safety.
Without it, valuable information remains hidden.
Product Teams
Modern Product Teams prioritize customer outcomes over feature output.
This requires:
- Commitment to customer value.
- Focus on meaningful outcomes.
- Openness to customer feedback.
- Respect for cross-functional expertise.
- Courage to challenge assumptions.
Product Thinking therefore reinforces the behavioural principles described by the Scrum Values.
DevOps Culture
DevOps emphasizes collaboration between Development and Operations.
Its culture depends upon many of the same behaviours encouraged by Scrum:
- Shared ownership.
- Continuous feedback.
- Respect across disciplines.
- Learning from incidents.
- Continuous improvement.
Blameless postmortems, for example, demonstrate Respect, Courage, and Openness in practice.
Continuous Learning
Learning organizations recognize that improvement depends upon curiosity rather than certainty.
The Scrum Values encourage behaviours such as:
- Asking questions.
- Experimenting.
- Reflecting.
- Sharing knowledge.
- Improving together.
These behaviours create organizations capable of adapting continuously as technology and customer needs evolve.
Leadership
Modern Agile leadership extends beyond managing work.
Leaders create environments where Scrum Values can flourish.
Effective leaders:
- Build trust.
- Encourage experimentation.
- Support transparency.
- Remove organizational impediments.
- Empower teams to make decisions.
Leadership therefore influences culture more than process.
Comparison
| Modern Practice | Scrum Values in Action |
|---|---|
| Psychological Safety | Openness, Respect, Courage |
| Product Teams | Commitment, Focus |
| DevOps | Respect, Openness, Courage |
| Continuous Learning | Commitment, Courage |
| Leadership | All five values |
🔗 How These Concepts Work Together
Psychological Safety encourages openness.
Product Teams focus on customer value.
DevOps strengthens collaboration.
Continuous Learning accelerates improvement.
Leadership reinforces the behaviours that make all of these possible.
Together, they demonstrate that Scrum Values remain highly relevant in modern software engineering.
🏛️ Architecture Insight
Modern engineering practices depend upon technical excellence—but they also depend upon healthy team culture.
Even the best architecture cannot compensate for environments where people fear sharing problems, challenging assumptions, or learning from failure.
5. Common Misconceptions
Scrum Values are often misunderstood because they appear simple.
In reality, they represent behaviours that require deliberate practice and organizational support.
Scrum Values are just soft skills
The Scrum Values directly influence transparency, inspection, adaptation, collaboration, and product quality.
They are practical behaviours that enable empirical product development.
Commitment means committing to fixed scope
Scrum Teams commit to goals and customer value—not to ignoring new evidence.
Adaptation remains essential.
Openness means agreeing with everyone
Healthy openness encourages honest discussion and constructive disagreement.
Different opinions improve decision-making when expressed respectfully.
Respect means avoiding conflict
Respect does not eliminate disagreement.
It enables disagreement without damaging collaboration.
Healthy Scrum Teams challenge ideas while respecting the people presenting them.
Courage means taking unnecessary risks
Courage means acting on evidence even when doing so is uncomfortable.
Sometimes courage means stopping work, admitting mistakes, or changing direction.
Values matter less than process
Processes create structure.
Values determine whether that structure produces learning or bureaucracy.
High-performing teams excel because of both.
🔗 Common Theme
Every misconception treats Scrum Values as optional cultural ideals.
In reality, they are practical behaviours that enable empirical learning and continuous improvement.
🤝 Culture Insight
Strong processes cannot compensate for weak team culture.
6. 💼 In Practice
Case Study: When Behaviour Changed the Outcome
A Scrum Team consistently completed Sprint work on time.
Despite this, customer satisfaction remained low.
Sprint Reviews generated little discussion.
Retrospectives rarely identified meaningful improvements.
Team members later admitted they avoided raising concerns because they feared criticism.
The organization decided to focus on the Scrum Values rather than changing the Scrum process.
Step 1 — Encourage Openness
Sprint Reviews became collaborative discussions instead of status presentations.
Developers openly shared technical risks and uncertainties.
Step 2 — Build Respect
Retrospectives shifted away from assigning blame.
Discussions focused on improving systems and processes rather than criticizing individuals.
Step 3 — Support Courage
Leadership encouraged experimentation.
Teams felt comfortable proposing alternative solutions and acknowledging unsuccessful approaches.
Results
Within several Sprints, the organization observed:
- More honest discussions.
- Faster identification of risks.
- Better customer feedback.
- Greater team engagement.
- Higher product quality.
Lessons Learned
The team concluded that:
- Scrum ceremonies alone do not create collaboration.
- Healthy behaviours improve empirical learning.
- Trust accelerates adaptation.
- Culture influences product quality as much as process.
Remember
Scrum succeeds because people continuously learn together—not because they simply attend ceremonies.
7. 💡 Did You Know?
Scrum Values were formally introduced in 2001
Although many of these behaviours existed earlier, the Scrum Values were explicitly defined to emphasize the cultural foundations required for effective Scrum.
High-performing teams consistently demonstrate similar behaviours
Research into successful engineering organizations repeatedly highlights trust, collaboration, openness, and shared ownership as common characteristics.
Psychological Safety predicts team effectiveness
Studies, including Google's Project Aristotle, found Psychological Safety to be one of the strongest predictors of successful team performance.
Many aspects of Psychological Safety closely align with the Scrum Values.
Scrum Values complement Empiricism
Empiricism explains how Scrum learns.
The Scrum Values explain how people create an environment where that learning becomes possible.
Culture scales more effectively than process
Organizations often struggle to scale Agile through additional process.
Shared values and behaviours frequently scale more successfully because they influence decision-making throughout the organization.
8. 📝 Key Takeaways
After completing this chapter, you should understand that:
- Scrum Values create the behavioural foundation of Scrum.
- Commitment focuses teams on meaningful goals rather than fixed plans.
- Focus enables teams to maximize value by reducing unnecessary distractions.
- Openness creates the transparency required for empirical learning.
- Respect strengthens collaboration and Psychological Safety.
- Courage enables teams to adapt when evidence challenges existing assumptions.
- Scrum Values reinforce modern engineering practices such as DevOps, Product Thinking, and Continuous Learning.
- Effective Scrum depends as much on culture as on process.
- Healthy behaviours make empirical product development possible.
Remember
Scrum Values are not soft skills.
They are the behavioural mechanisms that make empirical product development possible.
9. 📚 Further Reading
Continue With
The next chapter explores the people who bring Scrum to life.
- 104 - Scrum Team
You'll examine:
- Self-managing teams
- Cross-functional collaboration
- Accountability
- Team dynamics
- Collective ownership
Related Topics
Scrum
- Scrum Guide — Ken Schwaber & Jeff Sutherland
- Essential Scrum — Kenneth S. Rubin
Leadership & Teams
- Turn the Ship Around! — L. David Marquet
- The Fearless Organization — Amy C. Edmondson
Product & Agile
- Inspired — Marty Cagan
- Coaching Agile Teams — Lyssa Adkins
Organizational Culture
- The Culture Code — Daniel Coyle
- Team Topologies — Matthew Skelton & Manuel Pais
Looking Ahead
Understanding Scrum Values explains how Scrum Teams behave.
The next chapter explores how Scrum Teams are structured, why they are self-managing and cross-functional, and how effective collaboration enables continuous delivery of customer value.
Next Chapter
104 - Scrum Team
Discover how Scrum Teams organize themselves, share accountability, collaborate across disciplines, and create the conditions for effective empirical product development.