If Scrum Teams become too large, they should
A) split into sub-teams based on function
B) reorganize into multiple cohesive Scrum Teams and share the same Product Goal and Product Backlog
C) divide into separate teams each with their own Product Owner
D) do nothing and focus on delivering a usable product Increment
The Correct Answer and Explanation is :
The correct answer is:
B) reorganize into multiple cohesive Scrum Teams and share the same Product Goal and Product Backlog
Explanation:
In Scrum, the recommended size of a Scrum Team is typically between 3 to 9 members. When a team grows too large, it can lead to communication issues, reduced collaboration, and decreased efficiency. Large teams often struggle with coordination, slower decision-making, and diluted accountability.
To address this, Scrum encourages splitting large teams into multiple smaller, cohesive Scrum Teams. These teams continue to work towards the same Product Goal and share a common Product Backlog managed by a single Product Owner. This approach allows each team to maintain the core Scrum principles of collaboration, focus, and self-organization, while still delivering value towards a unified product vision.
Why not the other options?
- A) split into sub-teams based on function: This is closer to a traditional siloed or functional team structure, which Scrum deliberately tries to avoid. Scrum teams are cross-functional by design, meaning they contain all skills needed to deliver a product increment. Splitting by function would create dependencies, hand-offs, and reduce team ownership.
- C) divide into separate teams each with their own Product Owner: Having multiple Product Owners for one product can lead to conflicting priorities, inconsistent vision, and fragmented work. Scrum recommends one Product Owner per product to maintain a single, clear source of prioritization and product vision.
- D) do nothing and focus on delivering a usable product Increment: Ignoring the problems caused by large team size can cause inefficiencies and lower quality. While delivering usable increments is important, team size should be optimized to enable better collaboration and productivity.
Additional details:
When reorganizing into multiple Scrum Teams working on the same product, coordination mechanisms such as the Scrum of Scrums or other scaling frameworks (e.g., Nexus, SAFe) might be used to manage dependencies and integration. Each Scrum Team works independently but aligns through shared goals, backlog refinement sessions, and regular synchronization.
This setup preserves Scrum’s lightweight, iterative, and collaborative nature, allowing large product development efforts to scale without losing agility or quality.