Organising squads in scrum
Hi - Looking for some advice please. I look a squad that looks after (Adobe Experience manager) development. The squad focus on new components needed, tech debt and building out the optimisations to existing journeys from Adobe target (a/b) test results. I have another squad purely focussed on hypotheses and target execution of the tests and then deciding which things should flow into the AEM backlog. The problem is that both squads effectively work on the same end to end sales journey so KPIs and outcomes are heard to define and split between then. Plus the optimisation squad have a dependancy on the AEM squad to ship things to customers. We have a bottleneck where the PO in the AEM squad isn't prioritising the target tests being built as they have loads of other things like new components for product launches being required. Do others face similar challenges and of these options I(Assuming no constraints to resource or funding) what should we do?
1. Collapse both squads into one with target and AEM developers in it
2. Leave the squads separate but put 1-2 AEM devs in the optimisation squad to sort the bottleneck
3. Set up a third squad of AEM devs who purely focus on the optimisation test outputs build
4. Do nothing
Any feedback welcome or other ideas to the 3 listed
Thanks, Ad
What are your thoughts about having Scrum Development Teams, as described in the Scrum Guide and Nexus Guide?
We do have scrum development teams and we keep those development teams synced up through cermonies etc but there is still a problem in prioritisation and outcomes / KPIs.
The problem is that both squads effectively work on the same end to end sales journey so KPIs and outcomes are heard to define and split between then.
There should be only one KPI for you: delivering working Done software increments (or translated: meeting the sprint goals). Any other KPI should not be your concern.
Other thing; it two squads work on the same end-to-end deliverable; does having two squads cutting these deliverables in half help your delivery process? Or could it be benificial for both of them to produce a deliverable end-to-end? If you want hamburgers; would you rather have one squad delivering the meet burger, and than another delivering the bun and sauce after this; serving a cold hamburger in the end? Or would you rather have each squad delivering a smaller warm hamburger to the client?
We have a bottleneck where the PO in the AEM squad isn't prioritising the target tests being built as they have loads of other things like new components for product launches being required.
The PO not prioritizing based on your squad delivery is exactly the way it should work. The PO decides based on (enduser / stakeholder) value, not in based on when you have your stuff ready. you should accomodate the PO's prio, not try to determine it.
It is fine you have a meet burger, bun and sauce ready; but not if the person eating wants to order french fries and a milkshake.