If you have a large team, you might be wondering if Agile is still a suitable development methodology for you. Is there something as Agile for Large Teams? There indeed is.This article will provide some recommendations that you can adopt based on your situation.
Agile Tools
If you are not already using them, you should ideally use tools like Atlassian JIRA, Rally, Wrike, Backlog, Trello, etc., that can help maintain your backlog and track your sprints. Team members can update the status of tasks assigned to them and the Scrum Masters can monitor the progress.
One amongst the following can be adopted as the Agile Framework for Large Teams.
Scrum of Scrums
Agile scrum teams should not typically exceed 8-10 members. This is to ensure it can be managed properly and all the required Agile ceremonies are not stretch too long because of the large team size.
If you have a large team, split them into logically smaller teams of 5-10 members each. From each of these scrum teams, one individual would represent as the “ambassador” to the scrum of scrums, which comprises of all such ambassadors. All coordination efforts (status reports, discussion of impediments, etc.) between each of the scrum teams can be done in the scrum of scrums daily standup. The Scrum of Scrum will track these items via a backlog of its own, where each item contributes to improving between-team coordination.
Atlassian states,
- Keep the scaled daily scrum meeting to 15 minutes, mirroring your team daily scrum
- Conduct the scaled daily scrum for 15 minutes after the last team daily scrum
- Establish a routine or agenda to keep the scaled daily scrum focused
Nexus
Nexus is based on the Scrum Framework and augments it minimally. The Nexus Framework was created by Ken Schwaber, co-creator of Scrum, and was released by Scrum.org.
Nexus is explained in a freely available Guide, called the Nexus Guide. Download it today. In addition, Scrum.org launched a book (shown below) that is available on Amazon.
SAFe – Scaled Agile Framework
SAFe could be another option to look at. Opinions may vary on is applicability in all scenarios. We will get into this in a different post.
The Right Approach?
To be honest, there is no right approach. Each organization needs to adapt to their growing needs to determine what would work best for them. The above could be some of several options that can be explored.
![[1]](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nexus_Framework_Overview.png){kind=link}