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Visualising Scrum Values

March 14, 2018

Working as a Scrum Master I asked myself...

"How do I know if my team are demonstrating the Scrum Values? What can I use to show their current state?"

Remembering an exercise I did some years ago whist at my local Agile group - Agile Yorkshire, I thought I could use a "Spider Web" to visualise the state. ( SO a big thank you to Agile Yorkshire and Royd Brayshay)

The exercise I used is to rate yourself of against a list of questions, giving yourself 1 point for each question you agreed with and then mark result on a scale. Once completed you should end up with something like this:

single spider

What Questions Did I Use?

Courage

  1. I work on the next highest priority Product Backlog Item (I do not cherry pick the work I pick up in the Sprint)
  2. If I see something that is wrong with what I'm being asked to do, I will say so.
  3. I will question & reproach my team members if I feel that they are doing something wrong.
  4. Regardless of the person talking, I will correct them if I believe that they are incorrect.
  5. I will stand firm if I believe I am right, even if I'm in the minority within the group.

Commitment

  1. I always know what the sprint goal is and how my work supports it.
  2. I do everything I can to ensure we achieve the goals of the sprint.
  3. In my current team, I have never thought of taking a sick day to avoid going into work.
  4. I always arrive on time for the events, my colleagues never have to wait for me to start the event.
  5. I know what it means to say that an item is done, i.e. I know the criteria that meets our Definition of Done.

Focus

  1. Whilst working on a story I do not get distracted.
  2. If I am not enjoying the work in a story I still give it the attention it needs.
  3. When enjoying working on a story I will not over work a story just to prolong it.
  4. I do not procrastinate when working on a story.
  5. As soon as the story is ready to move into a new state, I will tell my colleagues and either hand it over or ensure that they know it is ready to pick up.

Openness

  1. I do not shy away from telling difficult news to team members and stakeholders
  2. I do not hide away difficult issues in the hope that they will sort themselves out.
  3. If something / someone is annoying me I will address it / tell them.
  4. My colleagues can judge what state of mind I'm in, I can share my feelings with my them.
  5. I always say the true state of an item, and do not over/under play it.

Respect

  1. I listen with equal intensity regardless of who is talking.
  2. When listening to people I never talk over them.
  3. I value everyone's opinion equally.
  4. I am never concerned who works on what item in the backlog.
  5. I feel that my opinion is respected and that I have an equal say in the team.

So, what was the result?

smaller spiders

Our Next Steps

  • To support & encourage one of our colleagues to focus on Respect.
    • How? We're working on that one but we know it is an issue.

The whole processed enabled the team to talk more freely with each other. We discussed the outliers and generally felt positive that we were open with each other.

My role as a Scrum Master was to look at the areas where people recorded low against some key areas, (Respect, Courage and Openness) then encourage improvements in these areas?

 

Scrum Values

Scrum Values came into the Scrum Guide in June 2016 with the aim of helping teams support the 3 pillars of Empiricism (Inspection, Adaption and Transparency)

Scrum Values

 

First Published on www.TheAgileTrainer.com


What did you think about this post?

Comments (26)


Jason Malmstadt
04:55 pm November 1, 2018

Using this today with my Scrum Team. Thanks for sharing!


Tom Abrahams
06:42 pm March 22, 2019

Hello Steve. Thanks for sharing this exercise. Would you suggest to do the intial "rating exercise" together with the whole team, or let every team member do this initial exercise individually?


Alessandro Bignami
02:49 pm April 12, 2019

This is a very interesting article. I'll try this exercise ASAP with my team.


Peri Caylor
05:12 pm July 25, 2019

I love this as a way to encourage everyone to think deeply about the purpose of each value. Doing the self-assessment isn't purely to judge ourselves but to learn how we can spin larger web spider webs. The Scrum values can be viewed as contributing to personal growth, which may be a motivating factor.


HuaMei Zhang
01:48 pm August 28, 2019

It is a good approach to specify the contents of Scrum values. However, I am hesitating with some items, for example, item 3 in commitment. If someone is ill (catching cold, etc.), we would recommend him/her stay at home. The sick member shall not feel pressure.


Farah Naili
12:44 pm September 13, 2019

Hiya! Thanks for this article! Really helpful. I get the point of running a team 360° sort of survey, however I was wondering how and who came up with the questions. Wording aside, they very seem to be ok if written and tested on the writer's self... but I wonder if coming up with the questions with the team wouldn't be more effective since this way the understanding and definition of each scrum value is clear to everyone, and everyone owns it. :) What do you think?


Amogh Joshi
03:18 pm September 30, 2019

Excellent way to measure. What I am looking more is to show some real life examples as small stories or intances that happend and one or the entire team demonstarted the Scrum values or where they did not.


Michał Drzewiecki
03:00 pm October 2, 2019

Hello!

This point is not about taking a sick day off. That's fine. :)
This point is about taking a sick day off to avoid going to work.


Svetlana Zhuchkova
11:26 am November 8, 2019

Thanks a lot! very helpful.


Cass
02:20 pm December 13, 2019

Those are some great questions and ways of introspection as well as inspection. Great article, Steve! Thanks for sharing!


JR
02:46 pm December 23, 2019

Hi Steve - very well articulated and the value questions plotted on web graphs was a really good approach. I shall use them in future. Thanks for the article.


Sergio Caballero
02:09 pm March 20, 2020

Hello Jason, would you like sharing the results with your Scrum Team at that time?


Michele Iurillo
08:02 pm April 3, 2020

Great I will adopt it in my work... I want to use that like a sort of feedback360..


Danilo Vilanova
05:05 pm May 12, 2020

That seems like a great way to register and measure how individuals are currently feeling and might be a good starting point for retrospectives. I wonder if we should focus on the principles first if the team is in formation stage.


Tarun Sharma
01:04 pm August 5, 2020

This is interesting article. While it is great way to visualize individual team member perspective on Scrum values. It would be good to also understand what values means for the whole team. For example a specific value that gets lowest score as a team may help focus the team to work on improvement areas for specific area. Keen to learn if someone has experienced this exercise as a whole Team as well.


Abdul Montazir
12:45 am August 24, 2020

Interesting article, your list of questions covered insightful understanding of scrum values.


Adam Griffiths
05:19 pm November 19, 2020

This is absolutely brilliant, thanks for sharing Steve!


BoBo san
01:52 pm January 18, 2022

The real question is how to combine openess and respect to maintain psychological safety.
Is this different country by country and company by company?


Elza Santos
07:50 pm April 8, 2022

Hello Steve. Thanks for sharing this excellent an article.


Jose Infante
10:36 pm May 20, 2022

Nice idea Steve... let's practice it..


Túlio Carvalho
05:53 pm May 29, 2022

Excelente artigo. Vou colocar em prática.


rotesfahrrad
11:51 am August 17, 2022

Be open about the matter, but respectful in the way you address it.


Jon Jorgensen
09:01 am January 1, 2023

I loved this exercise. Thank you for sharing it. I am going to use this with every team I work with from now on.


Krzysiek Serkies
01:12 pm March 10, 2023

I love this exercise. Thanks for sharing this article. For me, the questions (in ENG) were the most helpful in improving my form of this exercise.
Have a nice day :)


Tarek Altouny
12:40 pm August 1, 2023

Perfect! thanks a lot many teams can get confused about each value meaning even Scrum Masters! this article removes the confusions.


Jen C
06:54 am May 4, 2025

Is there an online tool to do this and it would generate the graph automatically after everyone completes the questionnaire?