Scrum for small to midsize project?

Hi Bart,

How many team members are there including the Product Owner and the Scrum Master?

Scrum does not help if team does not practice Scrum and if any of the team member is not versed with Scrum practices. The size of project does not matter but size of team does matters to Scrum as Scrum suggests a team with 3-9 members.
By the way it's not clear to me what's a mid or small size project in this case.

I'd say that the first thing to consider is the quality of product ownership. Without a good PO who can manage and account for the Product Backlog, a Scrum project will struggle regardless of its size or the problem domain.

You should also examine the motives for using Scrum. Be aware that (for example):

- Scrum isn't meant for delivering an end product more quickly. Rather, it can be used to de-risk projects by providing incremental returns on investment.
- Scrum isn't meant for bailing out "death-march" projects that are already hosed. It's more likely to bring about their failure in a controlled manner.

Hello,

Currently we aren't using scrum but I am searching for a way to control the project flow better and especially the scope/budget. Currently a team exists out of a designer, a usability expert, two developers and a project manager.

I guess the team is too small to implement scrum? Should it work if a team gets a productowner as extra member?

Best regards,
Bart

> I am searching for a way to control the project
> flow better and especially the scope/budget.

That's an illustration of why product ownership is so important. A PO should exert pull on the backlog of work and be the final authority regarding business value and ROI.

Note that a PO isn't an "extra" member of a Scrum Team; this is a key role. You can operate a Scrum Team with as few as three people. The Scrum Guide is a good place to look for further information.

The team size is just fine.

Project manager can be replaced by Product Owner as Scrum does not have a role project manager. Transition PM to PO takes time.

The other team members should see the benefit of using Scrum practices and apply it in that project. The whole team, stakeholder should invest time reading this Scrum Guide and support the PO.

This size is good enough for scrum. I would assume building a website to be a highly interactive project so the sprint size probably will need to be small. But as other have pointed out you will need a scrum master rather than a Project manager.

Thanks for all the replies! I will take this info with me in my quest to set up scrum in the company!