Sizing the Scrum Team
The degree of complexity of technology – Agile embraces uncertainty by allowing substantial room for it from conceptualization to implementation. Hence, this is reflected in the team’s understanding of the complexity of the technology of the project and how fast they gain familiarity with it. The Product Owner (and management) should select team members from their organizational roster in terms of compatibility and availability for the project. Moreover, Product Owner is responsible for informing stakeholders of the product roadmap (long-term), release plan (short-term, sprint level) and the Sprint Goal agreed upon by the scrum team taking at least the scope, cost, velocity, and capacity into the mix.
Team Maturity
Despite it being difficult to measure both quantitatively and qualitatively, some factors to keep in mind is how mature and cohesive is the team’s dynamics and how these affect the Product Owner’s ultimate decision. The size of the team will relatively increase the complexity of communication as more pathways are established: [(N*(N-1))/2] where N is the number of members. In addition, the scrum teams need to understand what position of the maturity model they lie.
This can be referred in Tuckman’s stages of group development – Forming, Storming, Norming, and Performing – with the Performing reaching the optimal and efficient state of flow. Other psychological influences regardless of team size should be considered as well such as the Ringelmann effect, also known as social loafing, which is a sociological phenomenon describing a member of a team performing relatively worse when working in a group than working alone. Observe that these are not technological factors but sociological and psychological and can affect the performance of the team.
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