DZone
Thanks for visiting DZone today,
Edit Profile
  • Manage Email Subscriptions
  • How to Post to DZone
  • Article Submission Guidelines
Sign Out View Profile
  • Post an Article
  • Manage My Drafts
Over 2 million developers have joined DZone.
Log In / Join
Refcards Trend Reports Events Over 2 million developers have joined DZone. Join Today! Thanks for visiting DZone today,
Edit Profile Manage Email Subscriptions Moderation Admin Console How to Post to DZone Article Submission Guidelines
View Profile
Sign Out
Refcards
Trend Reports
Events
Zones
Culture and Methodologies Agile Career Development Methodologies Team Management
Data Engineering AI/ML Big Data Data Databases IoT
Software Design and Architecture Cloud Architecture Containers Integration Microservices Performance Security
Coding Frameworks Java JavaScript Languages Tools
Testing, Deployment, and Maintenance Deployment DevOps and CI/CD Maintenance Monitoring and Observability Testing, Tools, and Frameworks
Partner Zones AWS Cloud
by AWS Developer Relations
Culture and Methodologies
Agile Career Development Methodologies Team Management
Data Engineering
AI/ML Big Data Data Databases IoT
Software Design and Architecture
Cloud Architecture Containers Integration Microservices Performance Security
Coding
Frameworks Java JavaScript Languages Tools
Testing, Deployment, and Maintenance
Deployment DevOps and CI/CD Maintenance Monitoring and Observability Testing, Tools, and Frameworks
Partner Zones
AWS Cloud
by AWS Developer Relations
  1. DZone
  2. Culture and Methodologies
  3. Agile
  4. The Scrum of Scrums

The Scrum of Scrums

Kelly Waters user avatar by
Kelly Waters
·
Jun. 11, 09 · News
Like (0)
Save
Tweet
Share
10.24K Views

Join the DZone community and get the full member experience.

Join For Free
It is sometimes said that agile software development methods, such as Scrum, are ideal for small projects being delivered by small teams.

Personally I would certainly agree that Scrum is ideal for small, multi-disciplined, co-located teams, working on a common purpose.

However, these days we hear plenty of examples of larger companies using Scrum on a fairly large scale. I seem to recall Yahoo in particular once stated they were using Scrum on a project with 700 developers!

Of course it is relatively straightforward to scale Scrum up when the teams are basically a collection of small unrelated teams, each using Scrum but working on different projects. But what about when you need a very large team working on a single project, or on closely related projects in a large programme?

One technique for handling this - although I'm sure it's not enough on it's own by the way - is a technique called 'Scrum of Scrums'.

The concept is simple. Each team meets every day and holds their daily Scrum as usual. One or two representatives from each Scrum team attend a higher level Scrum to coordinate across teams. And on very large teams, one or two representatives from the higher level Scrum attends an even higher level Scrum, and so on.

It means some people need to attend two Scrums, but the Scrum of Scrums technique scales up very well and is easy to see how important information can be quickly cascaded all the way up the line on very large projects.

But the information that needs to be communicated, and the frequency of communication, shifts as you go up the line, and the process for a Scrum of Scrums needs to be slightly different from a usual Scrum.

Mike Cohn - popular author of Agile Estimating and Planning and User Stories Applied - has written a blog post giving his advice on how to apply the Scrum of Scrums technique...

Advice on conducting a Scrum of Scrums - by Mike Cohn

Kelly.
scrum agile

Published at DZone with permission of Kelly Waters, DZone MVB. See the original article here.

Opinions expressed by DZone contributors are their own.

Popular on DZone

  • Rust vs Go: Which Is Better?
  • Use Golang for Data Processing With Amazon Kinesis and AWS Lambda
  • Fargate vs. Lambda: The Battle of the Future
  • Top 10 Best Practices for Web Application Testing

Comments

Partner Resources

X

ABOUT US

  • About DZone
  • Send feedback
  • Careers
  • Sitemap

ADVERTISE

  • Advertise with DZone

CONTRIBUTE ON DZONE

  • Article Submission Guidelines
  • Become a Contributor
  • Visit the Writers' Zone

LEGAL

  • Terms of Service
  • Privacy Policy

CONTACT US

  • 600 Park Offices Drive
  • Suite 300
  • Durham, NC 27709
  • support@dzone.com
  • +1 (919) 678-0300

Let's be friends: