Scrum Values – Courage: What it means to the Scrum Roles?
Scrum promotes teamwork and transparency - there will be situations when one may need to express an idea, put forward an opinion, discuss a progress, bring an impediment, convince customers, stakeholders, top management, or even team members. A Scrum Team needs courage to address issues and difficulties that may impede their work.
The Scrum Guide mentions five values:
1. Focus
2. Openness
3. Respect
4. Courage
5. Commitment
In this article, we'll discuss the Scrum Value Courage, and what it means to different Scrum roles.
What is Courage in Scrum?
The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines Courage as the mental or moral strength to venture, persevere, and withstand danger, fear, or difficulty.
When it comes to Scrum, Courage means Scrum Teams should feel safe and comfortable in saying no, asking for help, accepting challenges or trying new things. They should be courageous enough to question the status quo if it affects their ability to succeed.
Courage - what it means to a Product Owner?
A Product Owner believes in Scrum and the idea of self-organization. They know that Scrum helps to solve complex adaptive problems, and a self-organizing Development Team can do work independently, correctly and quickly. But at times, the Development Team may fail, even if they are extremely overperforming and hard working. And since the Product Owners have forecasts and commitments towards the product releases, failures will raise questions for them, too.
So, the Product Owners need to have the courage to trust the Development Team in spite of anticipating that they may sometimes fail. A Product Owner should trust the Development Team based on wisdom and not on some naive expectation.
In addition, a Product Owner also shows courage by saying "no" to low-value features. Also, the Product Owner shows courage to work with several stakeholders to take care of their needs, but not able to satisfy all of them at the word 'go'. Also, a Product Owner also shows courage to experiment with new features that may wow the users – but are not proven before.
Courage - what it means to a Development Team?
The Development Team is responsible for delivering a quality product. So, they demonstrate courage by working the way they feel is the best for delivering a quality product. They must say "no" to compromise on quality under pressure or changing their way of working. They may also refuse to address unrealistic expectations from the Product Owner and stick to the Sprint Goals that were collaboratively agreed by the entire Scrum Team.
The Development Team demonstrates courage by bringing the progress and problems to the forefront rather than hiding till the Sprint Review day. Fail fast, Fail today rather than the last day.
Courage - what it means to a Scrum Master?
A Scrum Master fosters team courage by creating a safe environment for team members to have difficult conversations. These conversations can be with one another, with the Product Owner, and with the stakeholders.
Scrum Master should be fearless about removing impediments that slow down the progress of the team. Scrum Master demonstrate courage by helping teams to embrace a new way of working, to experiment, to new ideas of product development.
Scrum Master should also stand up to the stakeholders to avoid side projects or changes during the Sprint, and gently direct them to the Product Owner. Also, they must help organizations adopt Scrum with courage because Scrum may not solve all the problems faced by the organization right away. Scrum will only expose the problems early in the cycle of product development and sustenance, thus de-risking early.
Courage - What it means to Scrum Events and Artifacts?
Let's take a look at what respect means to Scrum Events and Artifacts.
The Scrum Team should see every Scrum Event as an opportunity to inspect and adapt and realize that it's fine to change direction. This helps in bringing Agility.
A Sprint Review is an attempt to showcase the Increment to stakeholders. Courage is demonstrated by asking for feedback and expressing an intent to adapt based on the feedback, user preferences, market dynamics etc.
A Sprint Retrospective is an opportunity to inspect our current way of working and adapt to a new way of working that would improve productivity, team motivation, and foster collaboration. The Scrum Team should use the Sprint Retrospective to inspect itself and identify the areas of improvement.
Time-box of Sprint and Scrum events are courageous ways to improve efficiency and overall working of the teams and organizations. A time-box expires when the time limit is reached. They are not extended even if the the goals are achieved.
Being transparent about the planned work and progress through Sprint and Product Backlog needs courage. And this leads to trust and team bonding.
Benefits of Courage in Scrum
When the Scrum Team Members have courage, they tend to do the right thing and work on difficult problems. Courage also ensures the team members support each other in doing the right things and taking informed risks.
Let's discuss some benefits of courage in Scrum.
Build great products
Courage helps to make decision-making, innovation and thinking outside the box. This leads to new ways of working and building great products that satisfy the users and meets or exceeds market expectations.
Growing a team
Nurturing and growing a team are crucial. Courage allows teams to identify their shortcomings and work on them to become a better version of themselves.
Unlearn and Re-learn
Courage helps individuals and teams to unlearn an old skill or an old way of working. One needs courage to re-learn a new skill, new technology, new domain and grow one-self as well grow the organization.
Solution of problems
Working on a complex product development, maintenance or sustenance can sometimes cause problems. And courage turns out to be an essential element in tackling problems that prove difficult.
Transparency in process
When the workload is more, and the pressure is high, the progress can sometimes slow down. Courage makes sure the Development Team is transparent about the progress.
A helpful culture
When a team member needs help, they should voice it out without hesitation. Courage allows team members to admit their lack of knowledge in certain areas and ask for help from the experts.
Honesty with customers
No one is perfect, and mistakes can happen. What's important is to accept those mistakes and fix them. Courage allows the Scrum Team to be honest with the customers if there's a mistake and how they propose to fix it.
Conclusion
Courage is essential in Scrum, and every member needs it at every stage of the project. Courage allows the team to eliminate impediments and work at full capacity. It provides a safe environment.
References:
- Scrum Guide from www.ScrumGuides.org
- https://www.scrumalliance.org/about-scrum/values
- https://www.visual-paradigm.com/scrum/the-5-scrum-values/
- https://www.scrum.org/resources/blog/maximize-scrum-scrum-values-courage-part-3-5
- https://www.scrum.org/resources/blog/courage-increasingly-important-value-delivering-products
