SCRUM | THE SCRUM GUIDE | VALUE SYSTEMS

About the Scrum Values

(like five jars watering a garden)

The Five Values — image by flaleman, Insel Hombroich, 2018

Many Scrum practitioners and teachers agree that the idea of having five values and devoting a chapter to them in The Scrum Guide, is somewhat weird and over-the-top.

There are many reasons for people’s uneasiness with the Scrum values. Not alone is speaking of values perceived by some as outlandish, seen that values are a moral and/or ethical subject if ever there is one, they are believed altogether to have no place in an environment of software and/or product development. Yet, by others, not the values per se, but rather the choice of precisely these five is debated — while others again question the fact that The Scrum Values section in The Scrum Guide is so short that it appears all but non-committal.

In the present piece I am addressing all of these and other refutations, while I attempt to shed some light on the values chosen, since The Scrum Guide, admittedly, does not.

Five ninka certificates mounted on a board — Harvard Museums, 2019.122.13, object/96654

In fact, the Values chapter in The Guide contains no more than three ideas:

(1) a list of five items
(2) five…