The scalability of Scrum

Chip Lemmon — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 01:35:14 GMT

So I've been playing the role of Scrum Master for a grand total of 6 Sprints on 2 projects. In that time I've come to two very distinct issues that make me question if what I am doing is really Scrum? While I believe that you cannot adhere to any methodology 100% without some interpretation and customizing, I am wondering if the things I am doing are so profoundly out of bounds that it invalidates our approach as Scrum.

Scenario 1: I as a "Scrum Master" dutifully play the role by limiting if not completely removing all impediments for my team. However, I manage 3 concurrent application development efforts at the same time. So while I am integrated into the design and development decisions of my teams, I am only there for each team 33%. Is this okay for a Scrum Master? Let's take it one step further. While I do make the ultimate design decisions I am not actually writing the code with my team. Does this negate my effectiveness as a Scrum Master?

Scenario 2: Some of my projects use a blend of on-shore and off-shore staff. Does this violate the pure intent of Scrum? There is not very much cohesion among the two groups of developers. This doesn't feel like a very Agile setup.

So what do my projects do that is Scrum?

1. We have a pre-sprint planning meeting every sprint.
2. We manage a product backlog and a sprint backlog.
3. We manage our progress in burn-down charts.
4. We run 30 day sprints.
5. We have a daily scrum that lasts no more than 15 minutes (usually).
6. Each developer chooses the tasks to work on and determines their own estimated effort.
7. We conduct a post-sprint review with the product owner.
8. We conduct a post-sprint retrospective.

Our daily scrum meetings are conference calls. The team communicates by e-mail and phone throughout the day as needed.

So my questions are simple. Can Scrum scale? Can a single Scrum Master effectively run multiple scrums? And can a team truly follow Scrum if they are an on-shore/off-shore mix?

--chaz

Alt.Net

The scalability of Scrum