Ask HN: How do you work in a larger Scrum Team?

3 points by Lynbarry 7 years ago | 1 comment

We are a relatively large Scrum Team of 8 (soon to be 9) developers. Apart from the developers we also have other roles in the team, for example a designer, a tester,... All in all we are 14 people.

We frequently run into problems because of this size. Most of the time there are multiple projects going on, with different people creating smaller groups focusing on one of the various projects. It's really hard to be on the same page about everything that's going on. Our standups tend to drag on, probably because the stuff people are talking about only ever is interesting for a small part of the team. We are not pulling in the same direction because we are pulling multiple things.

To me it feels obvious that the team is too large, but it's not an easy thing to change. So in the meantime I would like to focus on improving what we have.

Does anyone have experience working in a team of this size? Any ideas about how we could improve the way we work?

mtmail 7 years ago |

We ran whole company (startup) standup morning meetings until we reached 18. Regular employee feedback was that the meeting is too long. Also regular employee feedback was they'd like to learn more about what other people are working on.

We continued the standup meetings and forced people to be prepared and keep it short. Anything over three sentences got cut off. If somebody was late no comments were allowed and nothing will get repeated for that person. Looking back it was best for keeping the team (company) together.