Agility and Value-Based Leadership (Part 1): Courage

Andrew Burns, PMP, PMI-ACP is a Chief ScrumMaster in Edgewood, Kentucky.

  Agile   Leadership  

This is the first in a five-part series of articles regarding agile frameworks based on values, principles and practices. From the dozens of agile frameworks available, the best solutions always align to corporations, customer and employee values. After all, values catalyze the desire to act.

Literally hundreds of agile practices present opportunities to improve. However, not all practices apply uniformly. The most common practice today is the Scrum, or the quick iteration. Why select it?

Scrum espouses five values: courage, openness, respect, commitment and focus. In this series, each article will explore one of these values—on which a deeper discussion of principles and practices assembles. The discourse should illuminate how to select the right practice from a crowded field by considering agile values, principles and practices. The first article focuses on fear and courage.

Agile frameworks talk about values, principles and practices:

• Practices are the things done, like the daily standup meeting.
• Principles make clear why practices work. In the case of the standup meeting, the principle at play is inspection. Inspected work is always of better quality than non-inspected work.
• Values inform us why we want to embrace the principle and practice. In this case, we value the openness of a daily inspection.

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