Too Large
This can cause issues if developers are unsure which team member is working on what specific part. Work can sometimes be duplicated accidentally, or missed completely if every developer thought someone else was responsible. The stand-up meeting reduces the risk of these events, but does not eliminate it completely. The larger a team is, and the more developers there are, the greater the chance of work conflicts. Like the idea of “man-hours,” one developer working 8 hours may be able to accomplish much more than 8 developers working 1 hour each.
Too Small
In addition to teams being too large, teams can also be too small. Particularly for large projects, a small team of developers may be unable to finish all of the work that stakeholders need. This becomes an issue mainly when features are frequently not finished before the end of a sprint, and thus excluded from that release. Most projects can deal with having only a few developers. The developers’ velocity may be lower, but the team can organize stories such that the team still finishes new features each Sprint.
However, when stories cannot be broken down small enough, developers may not be able to finish in time. Since a key part of Agile is delivering value to customers, regularly failing to finish a feature is unfitting for the team. Problems happen and any team will occasionally miss a deadline, but if this happens often, it is a key indicator that the team is too small.
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