Patterns For Spreading Scrum

Adopting Scrum is one thing, and spreading it across the organization is another. Adopting Scrum includes four patterns viz, Start Small or Go All In and Stealth Mode or Public Display of Agility. You can learn these four patterns in-depth in this blog .

As per Mike Cohn, there are 3 general patterns that are all about spreading Scrum among the organizations. The first two patterns include a team that has just started successfully implementing Scrum and then using its team members to seed new teams. The third pattern involves Scrum spreading using internal coaches by trying various approaches. Collated below are the 3 approaches for spreading Scrum.

1. Split and Seed Pattern

The Split-and-Seed pattern is used after an initial couple of teams have embraced Scrum and keep running less than a bunch of Sprints. By this point in time, team members start understanding the main purpose of working in a Scrum team. Surely, the team members won't have made sense of everything, except sprints should end with working software and they should be working collaboratively. The fact is- the team may take some time to yield good from Scrum, but Scrum always tries to feel natural to the teams.

What happens in the Split-and-Seed pattern?

In this pattern, one active Scrum team is split into two teams to form new teams based on the half part of the original team. At that point, new individuals are added to form the Scrum team. This concept can be well understood from the following figure.
This figure demonstrates the formation of two teams from an original team. If the original team is large, then it can be used to seed as many as four new teams, particularly if the initial team members are experienced and skilled.  

The new teams can be made up of newbies (newly hired employees) or existing employees that are implementing the Scrum project for the first time. The notion behind the split-and-seed approach is that the newly formed Scrum teams can learn the mechanics and practices of Scrum as they will get guided from the experienced (original) team members. The new teams are left for a few sprints until the team is well versed with the Scrum methodology.

Then, again, the functioning team is split into smaller ones and new individuals are added to fill out the teams. This cycle is repeated until the Scrum practices are completely introduced in the organizations.

Advantages of Split-and-Seed pattern

• This approach helps to add teams more quickly.
• Initially, the very first team has forced itself to adopt Scrum without someone with Scrum experience. But after the first team, all subsequent teams will benefit having someone with Scrum experience in the Scrum team to guide them. This reduces the pain among the newbies to transition to something new and unfamiliar.  

2. Grow and Split Pattern

The grow-and-split varies from the split-and-seed pattern. This involves adding individuals to the team until the team is large enough to split into two comfortably. After splitting, the size of the new teams is made small, ranging from five to nine members. After allowing the new teams one sprint at this reduced size, new members are added until each team becomes large enough that it can also be split. This approach repeats until the entire project or organization has transitioned.

Advantages of Grow and Split pattern

• With the grow-and-split pattern, you do not need to destroy any existing team(s), as it allows growing a team before splitting which overcomes the drawback of the split-and-seed pattern. In split-and-seed, the problem is that we need to be more cautious while splitting teams that recently started implementing Scrum.
• Team members feel the presence of more continuity from sprint to sprint.

3. Internal Coaching

Internal Coaching is the third pattern of spreading Scrum. In this pattern, the coaches were given particular authorities, like attending Sprint Planning, Sprint Review, and Sprint Retrospective meetings; one daily Scrum per week; and being available for two hours per week to coach the teams. Philips Research’s Scrum adoption is the best example of the third pattern for spreading Scrum.

Philips adopted Scrum and starting facing a problem. The problem was, like many organizations, Philips had some teams that were struggling with Scrum and others (teams) that were outshining with this new approach. Philips’ Christ Vriens solved the problem by using the pattern called Internal Coaching. He identified one team member who was performing well and had knowledge of Scrum. He appointed that individual to coach another team that had not yet progressed as far in its understanding and the use of Scrum.

Advantages of Internal Coaching

• Well-running teams do not need to be split in this pattern, whereas, in prior patterns (split-and-seed and grow-and-split) one functioning team is broken into new teams to form the basis of new teams. While in this approach, teams stay collaborated due to the external coach (joining the team).
• With internal coaching, the most-suited coaches can be selected for each new team.
• Coaches can be moved from team to team as after some time the team and its coach becomes stale. When the internal coaches move from team to team, they succeed in yielding new ideas from teams.

Choosing the best approach

The two factors like:

• How quickly do we need to spread Scrum to additional teams?
  and
• Do we have good internal coaches who can assist the new teams?

Steer the organizations in selecting three patterns for spreading Scrum. The answers to these queries will help you in selecting the best-fitted pattern to your organization.

Generally, the split-and-grow pattern is used when you are in a hurry. The split-and-seed approach is the fastest way to spread Scrum through an organization. If in case the technology doesn’t support moving people among teams, then the team members can be changed to improve productivity.

Secondly, the grow-and-split approach is a more normal and direct pattern. Also, this pattern is less risky. Consider this pattern in case of ‘no urgency’.

Lastly, internal coaching is used when the team is large enough and splitting teams is not possible for projects. This pattern can be utilized on its own.