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Several Projects and Increments to be done in one Scrum team

Last post 03:46 pm February 14, 2019 by Daniel Wilhite
3 replies
03:38 pm February 13, 2019

Hi Everyone!

I'm a somewhat green Scrum Master, and our Organization tries to embrace Scrum quite recently. And I need help.

So I understand the scenario, when there is one big product, and several teams are working on it. But what happens, when there are several small products in one team?

We are developing small products (2-3 developers are developing one) - they share the same technical ground, but the stakeholders are quite different for every product, so is the scope and the PO (however, the end customer, who is paying for them, is the same).

In my opinion, we should have a Scrum team for every product, but the teams are too small, it won't be effective. I told this to our management. They are agreeing with me on this one, so they've decided to put together 4 products in one team (~8-10 developer) and asked me to be the Scrum Master for them. So it will be like 2 developers are doing Product A, 3 developers Product B... and so on.

Now I think the focus will be lost. Honestly, I can not imagine a Planning, a Review or a Daily Scrum with this team, because there is no cohesion and not so many touch-point. 

My basic concerns:

Planning: Every product has it's own Backlog and ~ 2 dedicated resource to solve them. Every sub-team (I know....there no such a thing in Scrum) will prioritize their own work separately. Imagine, you are on such a meeting... How can I facilitate such a thing?

Review: This is my worst nightmare. Imagine it with 50+ stakeholder. The Stakeholders for Product A will be bored to death, while we are doing the demo for Product B. When I organize one review for each small product separately, for days I will be booked only for these meetings and what will happen with the Start of a new Sprint (the teams are not mature enough to plan without the Scrum Master).

Daily Scrum: What will be here discussed? What would the point be here, because keeping the team in sync of the team is definitely not.

I'm lost here. The management is pushing me so I need to find a solution to make this work, however professionally I'm not on the same page with them.

I would be thankful for best practices or tools or opinions on this matter...

Thank You!

 


06:37 pm February 13, 2019

Why not focus on one product per Sprint, thereby rotating between them? If weekly Sprints are practical this would allow each of the four products to be serviced at least once per month.


11:27 am February 14, 2019

But what happens, when there are several small products in one team?

We are developing small products (2-3 developers are developing one) - they share the same technical ground, but the stakeholders are quite different for every product, so is the scope and the PO (however, the end customer, who is paying for them, is the same).

 

I'm not convinced you have several small products. Based on the above, and without knowing more, I'd say that you actually have a single product that needs to be customized/developed/maintained for several stakeholders. As such, you'd need a single Product Owner who of course can, depending on the size and amount of customizations, act as Lead Product Owner liaising with individual Product Owners for each customizations. 

Everything becomes clearer/easier now, don't you think?


03:46 pm February 14, 2019

I agree with @Ian and @Eugene.  And I really think that the combination of their two response might work well for your situation.  As usual, the two of them nail the answers.


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