Agile Glossary

Scrum of Scrums

What is Scrum of Scrums?

A technique to scale Scrum up to large groups (over a dozen people), consisting of dividing the groups into Agile teams of 5-10. Each daily scrum within a sub-team ends by designating one member as an “ambassador” to participate in a daily meeting with ambassadors from other teams, called the Scrum of Scrums.

Depending on the context, ambassadors may be technical contributors, each team’s Scrum Master, or even managers of each team.

The Scrum of Scrums proceeds otherwise as a normal daily meeting, with ambassadors reporting completions, next steps, and impediments on behalf of the teams they represent. Resolution of impediments is expected to focus on the challenges of coordination between the teams; solutions may entail agreeing to interfaces between teams, negotiating responsibility boundaries, etc.

The Scrum of Scrum will track these items via a backlog of its own, where each item contributes to improving between-team coordination.

Also Known As

Also known as a “Meta Scrum”.

Origins

2001: the Scrum of Scrums is first described (summarizing experiences at IDX) in an article by Jeff Sutherland, Agile Can Scale: Inventing and Reinventing SCRUM in Five Companies

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Additional Agile Glossary Terms

An acceptance test is a formal description of the behavior of a software product, generally expressed as an example or a usage scenario. A number of different notations and approaches have been proposed for such examples or scenarios.
Test-driven development (TDD) is a style of programming where coding, testing, and design are tightly interwoven. Benefits include reduction in defect rates.
The team meets regularly to reflect on the most significant events that occurred since the previous such meeting, and identify opportunities for improvement.
A product backlog is a list of the new features, changes to existing features, bug fixes, infrastructure changes or other activities that a team may deliver in order to achieve a specific outcome.
An acceptance test is a formal description of the behavior of a software product, generally expressed as an example or a usage scenario. A number of different notations and approaches have been proposed for such examples or scenarios.
Test-driven development (TDD) is a style of programming where coding, testing, and design are tightly interwoven. Benefits include reduction in defect rates.
The team meets regularly to reflect on the most significant events that occurred since the previous such meeting, and identify opportunities for improvement.

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