We're looking for how to appropriately scale our scrum teams.
Right now, each team is operating essentially independently of each other, and line managers can and do move people between sprint teams. I don't think this is good.
Here are my core suggestions:
1. Volunteerism: The members of the scrum teams MUST be volunteers who have committed to the team.
2. The Scrum TEAM is the central unit, containing all skills from full time volunteers to ship code. The team is constant, existing on the order of YEARS instead of weeks or months.
3. Managers should be mentors, never task givers.
4. Tribes and Squads: Each manager leads a tribe on a functional area, and meets with the tribe each day and makes themselves available to others wanting to learn. The Scrum teams are squads, with every skill needed.
5. A fast-response team may be a good idea.
6. Combined planning sessions, reviews, retros. All teams join together for the combined planning session, with two rotating volunteers from each squad. The Reviews are done together, with hand off to each individual team. Do retros individually by squad, bringing larger-scale issues up in the combined Retro.
Those're the major items.
Whatcha think?
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Too often people associate scrum with interchangeability and that you can simply drop a human resource into an existing team and expect them to be at full velocity from the first week. We both know that's fantasy.
ReplyDeleteTeams build on trust and make up for each other's weaknesses best when they are allowed time to discover them. New people make this harder for everyone, not just the new person because they're an unknown value and asset.
The best teams, as you pointed out, are together for years and you can rely on them because they have come to rely on each other. Losing a team member if a morale hit and getting a new person as a replacement also affect the team's total performance.
Management needs to remember that in scrum, they are there to provide tools and clear obstacles, not create them. Moving people around creates a sense that people are just cogs and this will impact performance and code quality.
Does this methodology posit that there is an optimal team size? Or is that context-dependent?
ReplyDeleteJosh McGraw Yes!
ReplyDeleteA single scrum-team is a cross-functional unit made up of 3-9 T-shaped fully dedicated professionals who have all the skills required to send the product (usually working software) to the client.
So, how do we go from that to 50 or 100 people without creating a bullshit hierarchy?
William Nichols "So, how do we go from that to 50 or 100 people without creating a bullshit hierarchy?"
ReplyDeleteStart two new companies.
That's not a tenable solution, I'm pretty sure.
ReplyDeleteSo, military organizational structures are inherently hierarchical on paper, but in practice (in my experience in the Marine Corps at least) the concept of "small unit leadership" dictates pushing as much responsibility and autonomy as possible, as far down the org chart as possible. Practical realities dictate HOW far in a given circumstance, but often by a few rungs up the chart the leadership's primary job is "ensure conditions for success by those doing the actual work."
ReplyDeleteSo from the outside of this methodology, my curiosity lies in: is adding hierarchy inherently viewed as bad, or is there a possibility for the creation of (minimal additional) hierarchy whose sole purpose is to enable and strengthen the autonomy of the layers "below" them?
Oh, yes! Business is weird, because bosses have hiring and firing authority, so it's weird for them not to be able to assign work -- which is exactly what scrum calls for.
ReplyDeleteThe key thing for management to do -- in my view -- is mentorship. To be teachers. And, yeah, to make sure things can actually be done.
As someone who has spent a lot of time reading, thinking about, teaching and even practicing self-organisation, your suggestions look pretty good to me!
ReplyDelete/sub. I think the volunteer idea is especially good.
ReplyDeleteInstead of tribes and squads: Guild & Crew. Your guild is people who do the same type of work, your squad is your scrum team -- the people you work with.
ReplyDeleteYou can join multiple guilds, but are on one and only one crew.
Like Firefly: You can't be both on Serenty and some other Firefly-class ship.
Rabbit Stoddard Good! I've seen line managers moving people around scrum teams, and need to find a way to stop that shit right now.
ReplyDeleteWilliam Nichols having this same problem, and it is incredibly wearing and morale destroying.
ReplyDeleteWilliam Nichols Can you explain to the managers that moving someone costs the entire team work hours?
ReplyDelete