Scrum of Scrums

scrum of scrums
scrum of scrums

Create Scrum Teams is a first step in organizing Agile teams. However, in large companies, it will be essential to have several Scrum teams working together. The Scrum of Scrums framework will help you in this task.

However nowadays, many scrum frameworks exist and are often more popular than this method seen as aging. You will be able to look at the LeSS, Nexus, SAFe …

Articles:

LeSS agile framework?
Nexus framework
The SAFe framework in agile

This second step to coordinate several Scrum teams is not so obvious but there are organizational concepts that will help you do it.

Scrum of Scrums (Sos)

The Scrum of Scrums purpose to do a Daily Scrum of Scrums every 2 days; however, only one ambassador from each team will be invited. This ambassador will be the voice of his team at this ceremony. We will apply the same concept if we still have a higher level in the organization hierarchy of the project.

As you can see, the Daily scrum of scrums must follow the same rules like a classic Daily Scrum. It’s recommended to have a Scrum Master to accompany these Daily Sos (the one who wants to do it). Some people will use the scrum of scrums just for the teams who work on the same product.

Here is a simple picture to understand:

 

Scrum of Scrum
Scrum of Scrums

If the goal of the Scrum of Scrums is to improve transparency between all the teams and eventually raise alerts, we have not to forget the work to do by the product owners.

In Advanced Scrum, each team with different products has its product owner; these will have to meet once a week to make a PO committee. This meeting will allow them to coordinate their ideas and to work together in the same direction.

It’s recommended in this case to have a CPO (Chief Product Owner); he will coordinate all the work of the product owners.

How to deliver in production?

Let see SAFe

You can use a board like the Program Board in SAFe to improve the organization of your scrum of scrums. In the same idea, you can do the big planning between all the teams ; you can see the PI Planning in SAFe to inspire you.

What else?

If you have a team for different products, each team could deliver in production when it needs. If two team need to deliver something at the same time, they will use the Daily scrum of scrums to synchronise their delivery.

Latest tips for your Scrum of Scrums

We recommend you to determine a Super Scrum Master who will animate the ceremonies of the daily scrum of scrums. You can to choose one of the scrum master of the teams.

It’s very important to do retrospective SoS between the ambassadors who will also be able to raise Scrum of Scrums problems that will not necessarily be raised in the retrospectives of each team.

If all the teams works on the same product, it’s possible to do a Review Sos to present the overall work of the teams. This meeting is very fortunate to attract more people with important decision-making. Ambassadors, POs (and CPOs) and customers will be invited.

Conclusion Scrum of Scrums

Scrum of scrums is not easy to implement but purpose you the possibility to work several Scrum teams together in the company. It’s not an agile at scale very complete but it purpose the simplest solution to implement than other framework of agile at scale.

However, this type of organization is quite complex to put in place (even it’s the simplest concept). I advise companies to be accompanied to have positive results.

Useful link: Scrum at scale in french

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About Judicaël Paquet 368 Articles
Judicaël Paquet (agile coach and senior devops) My Engagements in France and Switzerland: - Crafting Agile Transformation Strategies - Tailored Agile Training Programs - Raising Awareness and Coaching for Managers - Assessing Agile Maturity and Situational Analysis - Agile Coaching for Teams, Organizations, Product Owners, Scrum Masters, and Agile Coaches Areas of Expertise: Scrum, Kanban, Management 3.0, Scalability, Lean Startup, Agile Methodology.

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