Heart of Scrum, RC1

I was thinking about Alistair Cockburn’s Heart of Agile: Collaborate, Deliver, Reflect, Improve. What would be the Heart of Scrum, reduced to 6 words? Here is my first iteration: Cadence, Ownership, Value, Alignment, Improvement, Leadership.

Scrum is…

Scrum is a simple, team-based framework for solving complex problems.

Cadence

Inspect and Adapt at frequent, regular intervals.

Ownership

The Scrum Team solves the whole problem, from idea to done.

Value

Produce something that could be valuable to users, customers or stakeholders, also in frequent, regular intervals

Alignment

The Product Owner solves the Alignment problem between the team and anyone outside the team.

Improvement

The Scrum Master helps the Developers, Product Owner and rest of the organization improve and collaborate more effectively.

Leadership

Leadership, whether inside or outside the Scrum team, provides guidance and support, and knows when to stay out of the way.

I am still toying with some of these, both with the titles and the descriptive sentences.

Value could also be called Concrete, or Tangible. The description could be: Produce something you can use, something you can sell, or something you can test in real life, also in frequent, regular intervals.

Improvement could also be Common Sense or Pragmatic. I really like the idea that the Scrum Master’s job his to help people recognize which interactions and practices are helpful and which one aren’t. Do more of the former and less of the latter.

Update: What is the role of the Scrum Values? I feel I should include them, but I don’t think much of the design of Scrum is explained by the Scrum Values. Having said that, when teams make working agreements to work together more effectively, their agreements often map directly to the Scrum values. (Thanks Joe Justice for this insightful question!)

Your thoughts? Does this capture Scrum well? What would the nice graphic look like?