The Development Team Size
Before, determining the Development Team size for Scrum (and XP) projects would ensure that the number of Development Team members would be fall within the range of plus-minus seven – which would be five to nine. While that is a good guideline, the Scrum Guide now updated this and officially says that in a Development Team, there should be at least three developers and at most nine developers. This range is just right, as it allows the Development Team to be small enough to move quickly but cover enough work to build a potentially shippable product increment towards the end of the Sprint.
The problem with having fewer than three members is that the decreased interaction results to ‘less productivity gains’ or, in other words, less work done. On the other hand, having more than nine members simply requires ‘too much coordination.’
As you can see, having a good team size matters because the number of interactions among the team members affect the speed of building software.
Relationships Within the Team
A formula that can be used to determine the number of interactions or relations within the team is (N (N – 1)) / 2, where N is the number of people in the team. Using the range of ideal team sizes from earlier:
- If there are 5 team members within the team. That results to 10 combinations of team members who interact with one another.
- If there are 7 team members, then there will be 21 combinations of interactions..
- And if there are 9 team members, then there will be 36 combinations.
This formula supports the earlier statement from the Scrum Guide on how bigger team sizes mean more complex interactions among the members. In order for software development to be successful, those relationships must be strong and stable. Having a higher number of members makes it challenging for them to build relationships.
Recommended Further Reading
The following materials may assist you in order to get the most out of this course:
Course Contents
Section 1: Agile Project Management
Section 2: Using the Agile Manifesto to Deliver Change
Section 3: The 12 Agile Principles
Section 4: The Agile Fundamentals
Section 5: The Declaration of Interdependence
Section 6: Agile Development Frameworks
Section 7: Introduction to Scrum
Section 8: Scrum Projects
Section 9: Scrum Project Roles
Section 10: Meet the Scrum Team
Section 11: Building the Scrum Team
Section 12: Scrum in Projects, Programs & Portfolios
Section 13: How to Manage an Agile Project
Section 14: Leadership Styles
Section 15: The Agile Project Life-cycle
Section 16: Business Justification with Agile
Section 17: Calculating the Benefits With Agile
Section 18: Quality in Agile
Section 19: Acceptance Criteria and the Prioritised Product Backlog
Section 20: Quality Management in Scrum
Section 21: Change in Scrum
Section 22: Integrating Change in Scrum
Section 23: Managing Change in Scrum
Section 24: Risk in Scrum
Section 25: Risk Assessment Techniques
Section 26: Initiating an Agile Project
Section 27: Forming the Scrum Team
Section 28: Epics and Personas
Section 29: Creating the Prioritised Product Backlog
Section 30: Conduct Release Planning
Section 31: The Project Business Case
Section 32: Planning in Scrum
Section 33: Scrum Boards
Section 34: Sprint Planning
Section 35: User Stories
Section 36: User Stories and Tasks
Section 37: The Sprint Backlog
Section 38: Implementation of Scrum
Section 39: The Daily Scrum
Section 40: The Product Backlog
Section 41: Scrum Charts
Section 42: Review and Retrospective
Section 43: Scrum of Scrums
Section 44: Validating a Sprint
Section 45: Retrospective Sprint
Section 46: Releasing the Product
Section 47: Project Retrospective
Section 48: The Communication Plan
Section 49: Formal Business Sign-off
Section 50: Scaling Scrum
Section 51: Stakeholders
Section 52: Programs and Portfolios