Jeff Bezos (the former CEO of Amazon) had a rule he’s famous for: to form teams that two pizzas can feed. Any bigger than that and problems start to happen.
What does the Scrum Guide say?
The 2017 version of the Scrum Guide’s suggested that a Scrum Team’s ideal size was between 3 to 9 people (not including the Scrum Master and Product Owner). Here are two variations that I heard recommended for the optimal team size:
5
7 +/- 2
9
3
6 +/- 3
9
However, in the recent 2020 update to the Scrum Guide, this advice has been revised to state that:
“The Scrum Team is small enough to remain nimble and large enough to complete significant work within a Sprint, typically 10 or fewer people. In general, we have found that smaller teams communicate better and are more productive.”
The Scrum Guide
The change to 10 team members was only a slight adjustment and is slightly less prescriptive than before. However, every time a new person is added to a team, the communication becomes infinitely more complex, and the chance for misunderstanding and miscommunication is high.
Too Large
On my last project, I had nine developers on my Scrum Team; challenging, to say the least. I think that having nine people on a team is still too many to function well. If there had been any more people on my team, it just wouldn’t have worked.
If your team starts to teeter on the edge of this size, you might consider splitting the team into two separate teams. One note of caution is to make sure you still have all the necessary cross-functional skills on each of the teams. Don’t start sharing a resource across multiple teams because that won’t be successful.
Too Small
I have also been on Scrum Teams as small as three people, which didn’t really work well. In this case, each person had to play multiple roles to get the work done, which inherently introduced quite a few conflicts of interest.
In this example, the Product Owner was also a Developer, and another team member was a Developer and the Scrum Master. You can see how this might lead a person to play tug-of-war with oneself. Ideally, these roles (or accountabilities as they’re now called) would be played by individual people.
Just Right
In my experience, the best size for a Scrum Team is not based on the number of people on the team but rather ensuring that all the cross-functional skills needed to deliver a done increment are present. That said, most of my Scrum Teams have from 4 to 6 developers, and those are the teams that have had the fewest problems and been most successful.
What do you think?
My opinion is based on my experiences, but what do you think? Have you been successful with teams larger than 10? How about smaller teams? What do you think the optimal size is for a Scrum Team? Let me know below!
Next up in this blog series:
- Can you use a Sprint 0 in Agile?
- Do you need Documentation in Agile?
- Is there a “right” way to write User Stories?
- What’s the best way to write Acceptance Criteria?
- How long should your Agile sprints be?
- Should all your Agile teams be run the “same” way?
- Which “flavor” of Agile is best?
- Can Agile co-exist with Waterfall?
- Story Size – What’s an Epic, Theme, Feature…?
- Can the Scrum Master be a team member, too?
- Can distributed Agile teams work?
- How should you estimate in Scrum & Agile?
- Is it OK to add items to the current Sprint?
- How should you manage your Agile backlog?
- Can an Agile team have more than one Product?
- What is the optimal size for Agile teams?
- Should Agile teams stay together?
- How should you handle defects in Agile?
- Can a hybrid of Waterfall and Agile succeed?
- What are the official roles on an Agile Team?