The 2020 Scrum Guide includes five values that are important to every successful implementation of Scrum. These values are courage, commitment, focus, openness and respect.
These values don’t get much attention, but the longer I practice Scrum and coach teams, the more important I find them. This article will define each Scrum value and provide examples of how they play out in the real world.
Focus
Focus in the context of Scrum means to focus on the work of the Sprint. Sounds easy, right? It’s not. Imagine that you are a developer working on delivering a Product Backlog item. You find something else that you could improve in the code (e.g. some technical debt, a part of the system that could be updated to be dynamic instead of hardcoded). It’s tempting to fix it right away, but that might be the wrong decision. Depending on the situation, attending to this work without consulting the Product Owner may undermine the Product Owner, who is accountable for deciding the most valuable thing to do next. Instead, a developer in this scenario should consider speaking to the Product Owner about adding this work to the Product Backlog. That’s focus.
When I use the above example in training, I get a lot of questions about the decision not to “fix” the code. Developers ask, “Isn’t that adding duplicative work if I have to open up the code twice when I could just make a small change while I am in that part of the system?” My response is to ask whether they have considered the testing implications of a minor technical change? Have they considered the long-term goal of the product and whether there might be something more valuable to spend time on than this particular item? Efficiency and lean are not just about making snap decisions about what to do next; they require dedication, discipline and a higher-level focus on the product goals.
The Product Owner provides focus to