“I have read that Agile needs teams of 7+-2 people to work properly. We are a large team and there is no way that Agile will work for us.”
Any discussion about Agile development in large companies will have this talking point.
And it’s a valid one.
Agile development focuses on frequent and free flowing interaction between team members. Agile is anti-bureaucracy, while the bigger a team or an organization grows the more bureaucratic is becomes.
So, does Agile work in software development teams that comprise, say, 200 people?
The data says that Agile actually works with teams with even bigger sizes.
The State of Agile 2015 survey which collected 3925 responses found out that 20% of the respondents who practiced Agile worked in companies that had more than 20,000 people.
These numbers are at Fortune 500 levels, and enterprise Agile adoption has shown a steady uptick over the years.
When we talk about scaling Agile in an enterprise environment it’s not about only increase in headcount. There are other complicating factors like:
Enterprises are exploring multiple frameworks to deal with Agile. Some of them are Scrum of Scrums, Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD) and Large Scale Scrum (LeSS).
The State of Agile 2015 survey found that the most popular framework for scaling Agile is Scrum of Scrums (69%).
Image courtesy State of Agile 2015
Regardless of how large a team is Agile always works with small teams of less than 10 members. In large teams where Agile projects are being run this is achieved by breaking down tasks into subtasks, and allotting small teams to complete these tasks.
While the basic idea is simple things get complex when you consider the details.
Scrum or Scrums, the most popular framework that large teams use to implement Agile development is loosely structured. Multiple scrum teams are organized to work on a single project, and every team sends a technical representative to a daily stand-up (which is a short meeting of about 15 minutes where all teams discuss issues affecting the project as a whole and set responsibilities for fixes).
Some ideas to get started with Scrum of Scrums:
In practice Scrum of Scrum has this structure.
Image courtesy Scrum Alliance
The Scaled Agile Framework is more structured than Scrum of Scrums. It delineates three tiers-
This is how it looks like
Image courtesy Scaled Agile Framework
In short,
In SAFe, the IT leadership sets priorities and allots teams their tasks.
The success factors for success at scaled Agile are having consistent processes and practices. Another important factor is executive buy-in, while using the same tools or platforms across teams is critical for success.
Agile has been demonstrated to increase team productivity, manage changing priorities, and keep projects visible. As experience with Agile methods increase the chances of success also improve regardless of the size of the organization.
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