Re: Re: Maximum Size of Scrum Team

On Thursday, June 30, 2005, at 8:24:15 PM, berteigconsulting wrote:

> I'm curious: what was going right that made breaking up the team a
> sub-optimal move?

> "The Mythical Man-Month" plus any number of other references all talk
> about communication overhead becoming excessive very quickly as teams
> get larger... how did this team of 20 avoid this (in addition to the
> modified daily standup)?

The rationale behind the communication overhead theory is that there
are N*(N-1) two-person communication paths, and this number grows
like N-squared. On the one hand, Agile methods like Scrum use
standup meetings and open workspaces to cause more of these
communications to take place in broadcast mode. On the other, they
use hot methods of communication, like conversation, that work more
effectively, reducing communication overhead.

To the extent that the above model is accurate, it was perhaps not a
special characteristic of this team, but a general characteristic of
Agile methods that they operate somewhat outside the N-squared
limit.

Ron Jeffries
www.XProgramming.com
If you're not throwing some gravel once in a while,
you're not using the whole road.

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