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Scaled Scrum and Cross Team Communication

Last post 08:35 pm September 20, 2016 by Olivier Ledru
3 replies
Jamie Sperla
01:02 pm September 20, 2016

Background: one product backlog and one (client) PO; two teams (soon to be three) and a "core" team; 2 week sprints

Issue: Cross Team Communication > sometimes there are dependencies or relationships that are not identified when PBIs are created or during backlog grooming with regards to work being done by both teams (team 1 figures out during the sprint that work team 2 is doing has a relationship with what team 1 is working on and it creates a lot of "stepping on toes").

Question: How do the Scrum Masters facilitate/encourage necessary communication between teams?

Timothy Baffa
02:52 pm September 20, 2016

Jamie,

To what degree are the stories being accepted by each team "independent"? If the stories have dependencies on other stories, why is that, and what can be done to remove those dependencies? I think you will find that as you increase the amount of independent stories that deliver business value, you will reduce the pain associated with cross-team coordination and communication.

I have served teams that have served a single PO with other teams. It is not advisable for such teams to groom stories in a silo without sharing the information with other teams. There needs to be additional communication and coordination across the teams serving a single PO.

What has worked well for me in the past is to have a team groom a story with the PO, and then for a single team member from that team to meet briefly with another team, actually performing as a proxy PO for the story. It helps not only to confirm story understanding for the original team, but also introduces the story to other teams. This aids information sharing across teams and promotes flexibility for Sprint Planning.

Ian Mitchell
03:30 pm September 20, 2016

Have a look at the Nexus Guide available elsewhere on this site:

http://www.scrum.org/Resources/The-Nexus-Guide

Might that be used as a frame of reference in your case?

Olivier Ledru
08:35 pm September 20, 2016

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