Agile
Agile is about co-located smaller highly effective teams, which can focus and provide values in fast pace, driven by ownership and team spirit.
In Agile practices, team ceremonies (such as standups, sprint reviews, and retrospectives) are esential to improve communication, alignment, and efficiency. However, when Agile teams grow too large, these ceremonies can lose their effectiveness.
I like to highlight how large team sizes and poorly structured meetings can hinder productivity, communication, and decision-making, advocating for smaller team structures to preserve Agile’s core values.
Agile methodologies are built around small, cross-functional teams designed to work closely together, rapidly iterate, and adjust to changes. However, as teams grow in size, they often encounter communication bottlenecks and coordination challenges.
The Challenge of Large Agile Teams
Research on team dynamics, such as the findings by the organizational psychologist J. Richard Hackman, emphasizes that as group size increases, so does the number of communication links between individuals, leading to exponential growth in complexity.
For instance, in a team of six, there are 15 links between members, but in a team of 12, the number of links jumps to 66, significantly increasing the cognitive load required for collaboration and decision-making.
This issue becomes particularly pronounced in large-scale Agile settings where ceremonies, meant to keep the team aligned, become cumbersome. In daily standups, for example, the intended 15-minute check-in can spiral into long discussions that lose focus, leaving team members disengaged. Similarly, sprint reviews and retrospectives become too lengthy to generate meaningful dialogue, as large groups struggle to stay engaged in the details presented by each individual.
The Two-Pizza Team Rule
Amazon’s “two-pizza team” rule, popularized by Jeff Bezos, advocates for teams small enough to be fed by two pizzas—typically five to eight people. This principle aligns with Agile’s emphasis on small, autonomous teams. As teams expand, communication becomes fragmented, coordination efforts intensify, and the ability to swiftly pivot diminishes.
The two-pizza rule encourages teams to break down into smaller pods when they grow too large, creating sub-teams that maintain independence while working toward shared goals.
Communication Breakdowns in Large Teams
Agile teams depend on frequent, clear communication to stay aligned on goals, priorities, and blockers. In larger teams, the number of interactions required, makes it difficult to ensure that every team member has the information they need. Miscommunication and misalignment become more common, leading to inefficiencies, delays, and even project failure.
According to research, larger teams tend to underestimate the complexity of tasks and overestimate their ability to complete them quickly.
Studies show that doubling the team size from two to four people can actually slow down task completion by 44%, as coordination challenges and communication delays compound.
Agile Ceremonies in Large Teams: A Case for Smaller Groups
In Agile, ceremonies are designed to facilitate open communication, reflection, and planning. However, in large teams, the effectiveness of these ceremonies diminishes. The daily standup, typically intended as a quick status check, can become a extensivly long, where team members struggle to contribute meaningfully. Also retrospectives lose their value as larger teams find it difficult to engage in deep reflection.
To mitigate this, smaller teams or sub-teams can conduct their own standups and retrospectives, allowing for more focused discussions. This also enables each group to take ownership of their work, fostering greater accountability and faster decision-making. When teams are too large, retrospectives often become a time sink, with little actionable feedback emerging due to the diverse and overwhelming number of perspectives involved.
Maintaining Autonomy and Decentralization
Agile thrives on the principles of autonomy and decentralization. In larger teams, decision-making becomes slower, achieving consensus becomes harder. Autonomous smaller teams can make quicker decisions. This decentralization of decision-making is key to maintaining the Agile values of adaptability and responsiveness.
In large teams, either the leadership layer is bloated, or all the team has to rely on single leader response as a bottleneck. Leading to slower, more bureaucratic decision-making. Smaller, decentralized teams, on the other hand, can operate more fluidly and with fewer bottlenecks.
Conclusion: A Call for Smaller Agile Teams
As team size increases, communication becomes strained, decision-making slows down, and Agile ceremonies lose their value. The two-pizza rule offers a simple yet powerful guideline for maintaining team size at a level that promotes efficiency, autonomy, and communication. Smaller teams can navigate the complexities of Agile more effectively, ensuring that ceremonies remain productive and focused on continuous improvement.
By adhering to these principles, organizations can prevent the common pitfalls associated with scaling Agile practices and ensure that their teams remain agile in both name and function. Splitting larger teams into smaller, autonomous units not only improves communication and decision-making but also enhances overall team productivity and morale, enabling organizations to better respond to the dynamic demands of modern software development.
While effectiveness comes in teams, the syncronization interdependencies will become more important. You can find exmples to handle these in methods like:
- SAFe – Scaled Agile Framework
- Large Scale Scrum (LeSS)
- Nexus
- etc. …
This approach is critical as more companies adopt Agile at scale, aiming to balance the need for growth with the principles that made Agile successful in the first place.
sources:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1090513818301491
https://blog.idonethis.com/two-pizza-team/
https://www.agilealliance.org/glossary/team
https://www.atlassian.com/agile/agile-at-scale1