All you need to know about the Scrum of Scrums

Scrum as we all know is an integral part of an agile methodology that involves a daily face-to-face meeting that lasts for about 15 minutes. Now the agile team is mostly composed of 5 to 10 people, hunkers down, and hashes out where the team is standing if we talk about the work progress. Similarly, what are they working on as of now, how long is it going to take them to complete the work, what are the potential obstacles that exist, and many more things are a part of scrum.Take This Course Provide online CSM Practice Test that is very close to real CSM Exam . Sure we know what scrum is, but the main question here is about the Scrum of Scrums.

It involves a variety of scrum teams that meet together and even have one or two representatives from each separate scrum getting together. Thus this gathering doesn’t demand to have to meet daily like a regular scrum meeting. Instead, having a meeting twice a week is enough in most circumstances.

Why do we need a scrum of scrums?

It is quite clear that for a scrum team to perform well, it shouldn’t have team members more than ten. That is why larger companies create more groups to accommodate all the higher numbers of developers. But since all of them are working in the same company, there has to be a way for them to stay in contact and coordinate their efforts to avoid pitfalls. These include redundancy and inefficiency. So that is why the best solution is that meeting that brings together all the representatives chosen from each of the agile team. The best and most obvious advantage here is that no team gets left out of the loop and everyone is given a certain task and their resources get allocated in an efficient and productive manner.

Scrum of Scrums team size:

Now if we talk about this meeting team size, then conventional wisdom recommends following the same standards applied in the smaller-scale scrum meetings. In this meeting, no more than ten attendees are allowed to take part. Though this limitation of attendees can force an organization to hold multiple scrums of scrums which in turn requires a scrum of scrums, yet this strategy has proven to be quite effective.

What are the benefits of a Scrum of Scrums?

Everyone says a scrum of scrums has turned out to be quite useful and effective in many organizations, and we’ve been talking all about what it offers. But still, it’s worth listing some of the main benefits of this meeting.

• It has made it easier for large-scale companies to use scrum methodology more effectively.
• It enables streamlines collaboration.
• It is a guarantee for every team to stay informed since everyone is represented openly.
• It acts as a big platform for everyone to air out all the issues and difficulties. When there are different representatives and multiple teams each sharing their issues and difficulties, finding out a solution to all the problems gets easier.
• It gives all the members a chance to express their opinion and then come to a mutual agreement about something.
• It provides a source to deal with new, unexpected developments that potentially affect a variety of groups or departments.
• It enables the team members to stay on track and prevents them from drifting into another team’s lane. When every team knows what their tasks are, then there is no point in interfering in other team’s work.

 

Main goals of a Scrum of Scrums:

It has pretty straightforward goals that we have already discussed above. But it’s best to mark them down again:

• To get a coordinated output from all the involved teams.
• To integrate the production of multiple teams to a single entity.
• To eliminate all types of blockages that can sabotage the work.
• To find out what each team has accomplished since the last meeting.
• Were there any problems that the team faced during the work? If yes then what were they and how they created a roadblock.
• Ask about the different tasks that different teams plan to accomplish before the next meeting.
• Was there any output from your team’s future sprints that you think could have interfered with the work of other teams.
• Were there any obstacles that any team has created for other teams?

All these goals help each scrum ambassador to contribute towards the ultimate success of the meeting. Only the key here is to foster a sense of coordination and cooperation among the team members which is also known as cross-team synchronization among the teams.

How to conduct a productive scrum of scrums?

The following are some points to conduct an effective and productive scrum of scrums meeting:

• Making sure that each team knows what points they have to cover during the meeting so that no time is wasted.
• To make sure that each team sends the right person to speak on their behalf and know that the right person doesn’t have to be the scrum master all the time. Just the person who knows what to speak on behalf of the whole team has to be the one.
• Make time in the meeting to solve different problems as well. The purpose of the meeting should not be limited to just get a status report.

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Conclusion:

As you can see a scrum of scrums is the best solution to all the large-scale organizations that have to deal with multiple teams and also making sure that these teams also stay in contact with one another. So if you are a part of a large-scale organization that has multiple scrum teams working on different projects, then this meeting is the best practice to follow. So, understand what that meeting is, its benefits, goals, and other things and use this practice in your organization as well and never stop learning.