Scrum values — Courage

The secret to overcoming everyday challenges

Hello Scrum Master, how are you? If you arrived here, it’s because, perhaps, you are researching a solution to improve the performance of your Team, promote engagement and/or change the mindset of the Team.

In this article, I’ll be talking about some situations where I needed to use Courage to solve the problems and challenges that appeared during the projects that I’ve led.

Courage to do what has the highest value first

It’s very common, mainly when the project is very late, that the Team chooses easy tasks and/or user stories to implement. This way it’s possible to deliver many things, however, the highest value isn’t delivered to customer!

It’s very important to have the courage to maintain the highest value deliveries and, perhaps, to do what is the most complex first.

Courage to ensure the Transparency

Usually, in Teams where the members are more beginners, it’s very common there are hidden problems and/or bugs in code. It is a serious problem, because sooner or later issues will come up and then it may be harder for Team to fix the problem.

Quality is a non-negotiable requirement!

Courage to assume our mistakes

The Agile environment is the best place to make a mistake and to try again. A team member shouldn’t be afraid to assume a failure, on the contrary, assuming that he or she is wrong allows for the Team to help the collegue when they have difficulty with something.

It is cheaper to solve a problem in the moment it happens than to postpone it

Courage to hold someone accountable for not collaborating with the team

The Scrum Team is self-organizing and it is necessary for each member to have the courage to talk to anyone who is not collaborating to the sprint goals. The Sprint Retrospective is the best moment to do it. At this time we have the opportunity to say what could have been better in the sprint regarding tools, environment, process and PEOPLE.

I hope I helped you with my experiencies, with you have any doubts, please let me know.

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Cheers!