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Meta-scrum teams

Last post 08:41 pm February 28, 2019 by Daniel Wilhite
1 reply
05:36 pm February 23, 2019

Do SCRUM supports meta-scrum team.?

If yes, what are they exacty..in terms of scrum of scrum framework


08:41 pm February 28, 2019

I had never heard of meta-scrum teams until I saw your question.  So I did a quick Google search.   It didn't take long to understand them.  So, in my opinion the answer to your question is "No" but let me explain.

Basic Scrum as defined in the Scrum Guide is not for work at Scale.  It does mention that more than 1 team can work from the same Product Backlog but doesn't provide any guidance in how to coordinate that effort.  In my experience when having more than one team working from same Product Backlog the work is usually ordered in such a way that neither team is doing work that interferes with the other.  That can be done by the Product Owner with input from the Development Teams during refinement.  So very little coordination during a Sprint is needed. The meta-team or Scrum of Scrum method is for the situations where work must be heavily coordinated across teams very frequently (often as much as daily).  

What you are looking for is guidance on Scaled Scrum.  Nexus (follow the link) is the solution for scaling that has been developed by Ken Schwaber and it describes how cross teams coordinate work when working from same backlog.  Meta-scrum is something created by a specific company to work in their adaption of scaled Scrum.  SAFe and LeSS both have their variations also. If you are not doing work that involves heavy coordination of multiple teams on the same product (and in the same code base) then you do not need the extra overhead.  My current organization is running 13 teams and we have 5 Product Owners so you can see how we have multiple teams working from the same code base.  But we do not have any Scrum of Scrum needs as the work is ordered, managed in a way to avoid dependencies.  


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