Scaling Scrum

Scrum, as we've already discussed, is all about working in small, focused teams off a single Product Backlog. It's the most efficient and productive way of delivering software. Sometimes, however, the product that needs to be delivered is so large and complex that having one small team is not adequate.

This presents the following conundrum: Scrum prescribes a small team of up to eight developers, one Scrum Master, and one Product Owner. How can we have dozens of developers working on the product, all using Scrum? The solution to this is actually simple: we can partition the product work in separate but related workstreams, or product components, and create a Scrum Team to work on delivering each component. Each team will have its own product backlog and will work like any independent Scrum Team does. The teams will have to regularly coordinate to ensure they don't get in each other's way and that they all work towards the same goal.

This approach...