A new Scrum Master inherits a team where nobody admits to being stuck. They print the five values as posters, run a half-day workshop and ask everyone to sign a values charter on the wall. Three Sprints later nothing has changed. What does Scrum actually say about how the values take hold?
Professional Scrum Master I, objective 1. Understanding and applying the Scrum framework medium
Machine-checked — no person has signed for it. This question was read against the source cited below by an automated pass, which found no contradiction. That is a weaker claim than it sounds: the same kind of process wrote the question, so it can confirm its own mistake.
Treat it as a good draft rather than as settled fact, and read the source below before you rely on it. It is not used in mock exams here — only questions a person has signed for are.
The options
Not correct The values have to be taught and accepted before a team can start using Scrum, so the workshop was the right first step and simply needs repeating
Wrong. Scrum says successful use depends on people becoming more proficient in the values — proficiency that grows through use, not a threshold to clear before the first Sprint.
Correct Team members learn and explore the values as they work with the Scrum events and artifacts, so the lever is the events themselves
Correct. The values are learned in the doing: a Retrospective where naming a problem costs the person nothing teaches openness in a way a charter cannot. What a team observes about the consequences of speaking up in a real event will always outweigh what it signed on a poster.
Not correct The values apply to the Developers, since they are the ones doing the work; a Product Owner or Scrum Master is not measured against them
Wrong. The values describe the Scrum Team, and Scrum extends openness to its stakeholders as well. A Product Owner who withholds bad news undermines the same process a silent Developer does.
Not correct The values are a nice-to-have — what matters is that the events, artifacts and accountabilities are followed precisely
Wrong, and it is the answer a compliance-minded organisation reaches for. Successful use of Scrum depends on people living the values; when they are embodied, the pillars come to life building trust, and without that a team can hold every event and still hide everything that matters.
Why
The values are not a preface to Scrum, they are what the framework produces when it is run honestly — and what makes it work when it is. Commitment, focus, openness, respect and courage are explored through the events and artifacts, and their pay-off is named: embodied by the team and the people around it, they bring the pillars to life and build trust. So diagnose a values problem by looking at what the events reward, not at what the team was told.
Where this comes from
- Cited
- Scrum Guide section Scrum Values
- What it says
- The Scrum Team members learn and explore the values as they work with the Scrum events and artifacts.
Practise this
Reading one question is not practice. The trainer will draw a set from objective 1 and space the ones you get wrong.
Practise Professional Scrum Master I
More questions on this objective
- A department is choosing an approach for a product where both the requirements and the technology are poorly understood and keep changing as the team learns. Someone argues for Scrum "because it is founded on empiricism". What does founding an approach on empiricism actually commit the team to? machine-checked
- At the end of a Sprint three items are functionally complete but have not been through the automated test suite the Definition of Done requires. To avoid an awkward conversation the Developers mark them Done on the board and include them in the Sprint Review. Which pillar has been damaged, and what follows from that? machine-checked
- A Scrum Team holds every event on schedule, keeps a burn-down chart and reviews its metrics carefully. For six Sprints running, the same impediment — a two-day wait for a shared test environment — has been named in the Retrospective, and nothing about it has changed. What is the accurate diagnosis? machine-checked
- Mid-Sprint, the Developers discover that a third-party API rate-limits far below what they assumed, which makes the current plan unworkable. One of them suggests carrying on as planned and raising it at the Sprint Retrospective, so the Sprint is not disrupted. What should happen instead? machine-checked
- Which THREE of these statements about Scrum theory are accurate as the framework defines it? machine-checked
- A Developer is fairly sure the design the team agreed last week will not scale. The team is halfway through the Sprint, everyone else seems content, and saying so means an uncomfortable conversation and probably rework. Which Scrum value most directly asks them to speak? machine-checked
All questions on Understanding and applying the Scrum framework