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typically 10 or fewer people

Last post 08:25 am January 3, 2024 by Steven Deneir
2 replies
08:36 pm December 31, 2023

Who can clarify for me this expression "scrum team, typically 10 or fewer people". Can a scrum team have more than 10 people?


10:15 pm December 31, 2023

Yes. A team has not somehow fallen off the edge of the Scrum world if its members self-organize into 11 or more. They would, however, recognize that it becomes progressively more difficult to self-manage when there is a geometrically increasing communications overhead.


08:25 am January 3, 2024

"scrum team, typically 10 or fewer people" is a guideline in the Scrum framework. So more is certainly allowed.
The Scrum Guide also explains why this is a guideline: "we have found that smaller teams communicate better and are more productive".

My experience is that if teams become larger, automatically subgroups are formed within the team. I am not saying this is a bad thing. Just that it shows that larger teams start splitting automatically in smaller groups. 
As Scrum Master you might want to be attentive to that, and instead of keeping one team, guide the team they make an actual split. 
This will raise transparency in accountabilities - again in my experience - especially during Sprint Planning: which team is taking on which Product Backlog Items; which dependencies do we see across teams; and how will we deal with these.

Hope this helps.
Feel free to shoot more questions!
 
PS You might be interested in my blog posts about the fundamentals of the Scrum framework. If so, please check out this page: https://boostyourscrum.com/professional-scrum-foundations-series/


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