What would we do if the Nexus sprint planning have too many dependencies and cannot resolve
Hi everyone,
I got a concern and I'm not sure how to handle it as a Scrum master. That would be great to have your help, Thanks so much!
Like in the Nexus sprint planning, there are many dependencies and hard for teams to choose the work they could pull into their individual teams for the next Sprint. No matter how we reorganize the backlog items, they continually find more or new dependencies.
Should we Extend the sprint length OR re-organize team members between the teams to eliminate cross-team dependencies or The Nexus Integration Team should complete the dependent work ahead of the Sprint for the teams OR reorder Product Backlog Items so that you can accommodate the dependency
Thanks,
Vinh
How about encouraging people to self-organize into Scrum Teams so dependencies are minimized?
Thanks for your response Ian, I agree that we should encourage people to self-organize into teams if we cannot resolve it! but if we identify them right in the Nexus sprint planning, is there a good solution to resolve/minimize in advance.!
Thanks,
Vinh
This is why the Cross Team Refinement event comes before the Nexus Sprint Planning event, as it is the main event where dependencies are identified and resolved. Of course, dependencies can be identified and reported at any time during the sprint too.
The Nexus practices have a wealth of knowledge that should help you to improve your Nexus skills:- https://www.scrum.org/scaled-professional-scrum-nexus-practices
Considering that the first thing taken into account doesn't provide any improvements (reorganizing the backlog items), I can say that I should consider to : Re-organize team members between the teams to eliminate cross-team dependencies.
In the worst case you can keep the dependencies visible and keep the nexus team involved in helping to reduce them during the sprint.
re-organize team members
If that's the solution, how is the crossfunctional aspect of the teams?
The Nexus Integration Team should complete the dependent work ahead of the Sprint for the teams
The Integration team is not a separate team that can waterfall development tasks.
reorder Product Backlog Items so that you can accommodate the dependency
We have a winner. Now that you know the dependencies, adapt to manage the dependencies: order them, and discuss them when needed, make sure people work together to create an integrated increment. If you can't eliminate dependencies, manage them.