If Scrum was a body, then the Scrum values would be the blood flowing through the body. I hope that the comparison helps understanding that without these values being understood, respected, and enacted, your implementation of Scrum is dead.
Scrum practitioners refer to these values a lot but generally from the Development Team perspective. They are obviously not limited to Development Teams only.
Hereby I want to share how the Scrum values impact the Product Owner:
1. Commitment
a. Product Owners commit to offer usable and valuable features (only)
b. Product Owners commit to collaborate within the Scrum Team and with users and stakeholders beyond the Scrum Team
c. Product Owners commit to maximize the value of the work done by the Development Team
d. Product Owners commit to reduce waste by soliciting feedback regularly
e. Product Owners commit to coaching/mentoring the team in building the right product
2. Focus
a. Product Owners focus on what is most important now
b. Product Owners focus on business value and customer needs
c. Product Owners focus on the “What” and the “Why” of their product, leaving the “How” for the Development Team
d. Product Owners focus on quality and long-term product viability by not releasing undone work
e. Product Owners focus on the needs of both internal and external stakeholders
3. Openness
a. Product Owners show openness by actively pursuing collaborations with stakeholders and the wider environment
b. Product Owners show openness by sharing product progress information, including problems and learnings
c. Product Owners show openness for regular inspections to help them decide over the most sensible adaptations
d. Product Owners show openness for help, ideas and suggestions from the Development Team
e. Product Owners show openness in to learn from other products and business domains, even including those from their competitors
4. Respect
a. Product Owners show respect to their sponsors by not building features that nobody uses
b. Product Owners show respect to the users of their products by fixing their problems
c. Product Owners show respect to the domain and product knowledge of the Development, acknowledging them as valuable for creating a better product
d. Product Owners show respect to the approach of empiricism needed in a complex environment, the process of regular Inspection and Adaptation with full Transparency
e. Product Owners respect the Development Team decision for making up estimates (if applied) and pulling the amount of work they deem feasible for a Sprint
5. Courage
a. Product Owners demonstrate courage by admitting that requirements will never be perfect
b. Product Owners demonstrate courage by admitting that they don’t know every single thing about the product, and therefore need help from all involved parties
c. Product Owners demonstrate courage by disagreeing with the stakeholders if they make requests that don’t align with the product vision and roadmap
d. Product Owners demonstrate courage by collecting feedback over released product functions and versions to validate their assumption of value
e. Product Owners demonstrate courage by admitting that the Development Team doesn’t know every possible implementation technicality at the start of a development endeavour
This post is inspired from Gunther Verheyen's original post - https://guntherverheyen.com/the-scrum-values/ . The free version of the international description of the Scrum Values is available at https://guntherverheyen.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/the-scrum-values-international-versions-oct-2019.pdf