Agile Teams at Scale: Beyond Scrum of Scrums

Agile Teams at Scale:
Beyond Scrum of Scrums
Esther Derby
esther@estherderby.com
+1 612 239 1214
@estherderby
www.estherderby.com

+1 612 239 1214 || esther@estherderby.com || www.estherderby.com || twitter: @estherderby || (c) 2013 Esther Derby
One team or a handful of teams may be able to deliver
small systems. Large complex systems require teams of
teams to deliver signiﬁcant features.
How can companies beneﬁt from “the team effect” at
scale?

Three main challenges in scaling teams:
coordinating work across teams
integrating work across teams
maintaining technical integrity of the system

Principles: Guide stars for scaling team-based work.
Practices: Social and technical practices that enable team-
based work.
Pathways: Steps to get from here to there.

Principles to Address
COORDINATION
• Organize people and work to reduce coordination overhead
• Analyze demand
• Context teams over component teams
• Minimize product dependencies
• Aim for ﬂow
• Build in slack and redundancy

Teams share...
a compelling work goal
responsibility and accountability
an approach to work
teams have...
complementary skills
ﬁve-seven members
history
Teams are one sort of goal-oriented social unit.
Teams can form the building blocks for larger goal-oriented social units.

Teams offer possibilities that functional or component
work groups do not.
ﬂexibility
learning
engagement
responsibility

Scrum of Scrums can work with a small number of teams working
within the same context.

Mike Cohn

A large system may have several contexts. (Think of context as a feature
group, for example “Student Financial Aid” in a system to track ﬁnancial
aspects of students registered at a university.)
Form cross-functional, multi-skilled teams within contexts.

INTEGRATION
•Make cross team and cross context communication
explicit
•Teams that integrate together plan together
•Lateral links
•Design for early learning

Make communication across context boundaries explicit. Use
integrating linkers to agree how to handle the interface and integration
between contexts. Integrating linkers should also agree on and write
acceptances tests that conﬁrm integration across boundaries.

TECHNICAL INTEGRITY
•Global and local standards
•Technical stewards
•T-shaped people

When several teams touch the code for services or component, add
Component Stewards or Component Steward Teams.
Component Stewards work to maintain the integrity of components.They
review code, coach, mentor, develop standards and provide guidance to teams.

Large systems usually need both integrating linkers and Component
Stewards.

Tech Councils, made up of integrating linkers, component stewards,
and test experts attend to the integrity of the whole system.
Product Councils look after product integrity.
Deﬁne decision boundaries for each sort of group.

Technical Practices
Continuous integration (CI) within context
Integration across contexts at some other interval (keeping in
mind “avoid late learning”)
Mutually agreed upon and developed automated test across
context boundaries
Architectural, UI & coding standards
Technical reviews

Social Practices
Scrum of Scrums within context to surface impediments
Integrating links (keeping in mind “avoid late learning”)
Decision boundaries
Component stewards or teams
Tech councils
Product councils
Planning
Story Mapping
Central AND Local

•Lateral structures handle coordination and integration.
People close to the issues have both the knowledge and
means to make decisions.
•Scrum of scrums handles impediments.
•Information ﬂows across and through, rather than up and
down.

How do we get there?
Mid-level planning
Demand analysis
Removing technical dependencies
Smaller chunks
Pathways

It’s not simple
It’s not easy
There is no one right way
There is no prescriptive plan
You won’t get there in one giant leap

It is possible
You will get there by adapting, iterating, learning
You will create a more ﬂexible organization
You will increase the speed and ease of communication
You will unleash potential

Some useful resources from within the software domain:
Domain Driven Design by Eric Evans
Practices for Scaling Lean & Agile Development by Craig Larman and BasVodde
...and from the ﬁeld of Organization Development and Design
Images of Organization by Gareth Morgan
DesigningTeam-Based Organizations by Mohrman, Cohen, and Mohrman
Creating Strategic Change by William Pasmore
Leadership and the New Science by Meg Wheatley
Resources and References

Esther Derby
esther@estherderby.com
+1 612 239 1214
www.estherderby.com
@estherderby

Agile Teams at Scale: Beyond Scrum of Scrums

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