Scrum is fundamentally a single team-based Agile framework. In fact, per the latest Scrum guide, it’s suitable for a team of ten or fewer people. But in reality, large and complex products or solutions demand larger teams to achieve quicker delivery times and meet the market’s narrow competitive windows. In other words, Scrum at Scale is a necessity, not a desire.
Now, to consider Scrum at Scale, one must consider all the building blocks of Scrum – the events, artifacts and roles (accountabilities). For example, considering events, Scrum at Scale requires planning, reviews, retrospectives, and daily stand-ups at scale.
While all aspects of Scrum are necessary, this article will focus on scaling for planning, specifically Sprints. While doing so, as our focus is on practical, hands-on applicability, we will first explore Multi-Sprint, Multi-Team management with the CIPSA framework. CIPSA (pronounced ‘sip-sha’) stands for Certified in Practical Scaled Agile and extensively uses MS Project Agile software tool to do scaling. You can download and read the CIPSA framework guide for free here.
Sprints at Scale with Multiple Teams *** UPDATED ***
In the CIPSA framework, when you team-level Scrum, it’s called CIPSA Scrum Framework and when team-level Kanban is used, it’ll be CIPSA Kanban Framework. The CIPSA Scrum Framework is shown below.
A single Product Backlog is cross-team refined and presented with the Product Goal to the CIPSA Team (sum of all Scrum teams) in the CIPSA Sprint Planning meeting. In this meeting, the “what” items to be delivered in the upcoming Sprint is decided. The items are taken from top of the Product Backlog and individual Scrum teams will execute the work items.
The below video [duration: 3m:22s] sheds light on how multiple Scrum Teams will tackle a single Product Backlog, take the backlog items, and execute them in respective individual Sprints. Watch this video before proceeding with the article to have better clarity. For the best experience, go full-screen HD mode and plug in your earphones.
Synchronized Sprints in CIPSA *** UPDATED ***
Did you realize in the above video explanation that the Sprints across the teams are synchronized? It’s a key point to understand and apply.
The Sprints are not only of same duration, but also have similar Sprint Start and Sprint Finish dates. This is important for a number of reasons, noted below:
- All Scrum teams and its members understand that they are progressing towards the same goal in the current Sprint, which in our case is the CIPSA Sprint Goal. Do note that individual teams can have separate Team Sprint Goals.
- While increments can come at any point during the Sprint, the final Integrated Increment, i.e., CIPSA Integrated Increment will come at the end of the Sprint. It’s the sum of all team increments.
- With disparate and uneven Sprint lengths, the individual teams tend to optimize locally, not for the product/system as a whole. But with the same length of Sprint and synchronization, co-operation among teams increases.
Next, we will execute this process step-by-step with MS Project Agile.
Our Product Backlog
In our case, we are building a large Stock-Trading system, on which multiple Scrum Teams will be employed. It’s shown below in the Sprint Planning Sheet view, which can be opened by going to Sprint Tools > Sprints tab > Views group and choosing the respective command from Planning drop-down list.
The Product Backlog has gone through the initial cross-team Backlog Refinement meta-event (which we saw earlier in the first video) and all high-priority items are towards the top. However, at this stage, the backlog items are not out into individual Sprint buckets and are not associated with the Scrum Teams.
Plan and Add the Sprints
To add Sprints across the Scrum teams, go to Sprint Tools > Sprints tab > Sprints group and use the Manage command. Remember to use the available Sprints template to create the plan. Otherwise, you can add the Sprints from Gantt Chart tools > Project tab > Manage Sprints command. For our case, each Sprint will be two weeks in duration with the same start and finish dates.
As shown:
- We have 5 Sprints planned for and added into our plan.
- Sprint 1 starts on Mon 10/5/26. Each Sprint is two weeks in length.
- Subsequent Sprints are planned and added in similar fashion.
You can plan for as many Sprints as you want for the CIPSA team. MS Project Agile software provides this capability.
Segregate the Individual Scrum Teams
In this step we will divide the CIPSA team into three Scrum Teams: Team A, Team B and Team C, working on our single Product Backlog. For that we will add a Team custom field, taking the text custom field. You can create this field by going to Task Sheet Tools > Format tab > Columns group > Custom Fields command > Task custom fields. This is shown below.
As shown, we have taken the Text1 custom field and renamed it as “Team.” Next, we will use the “Lookup…” command in the above view to add the team details.
As clearly shown above, we have three separate Scrum Teams – Team A, Team B and Team C. These teams are part of the larger CIPSA team but will work in different backlog items on the single Product Backlog. The values in the Lookup table are:
- Team A, for work items assigned to Team A.
- Team B, for work items assigned to Team B.
- Team C, for work items assigned to Team C.
- All Teams, for work items assigned to the CIPSA Team.
- Unknown, for work items not yet assigned. This will be the default value.
You may be wondering what items will be for “All Teams”?
It’ll be work items such as CIPSA Sprint Planning, CIPSA Sprint Review, CIPSA Sprint Retrospective, among others. These are meta-events and not specific to individual Scrum Teams.
References
[1] *NEW* Certification Course: Certified In Practical Scaled Agile (CIPSA)
[2] New Practical Scaled Agile Framework – The CIPSA Framework Guide
[3] Understanding the CIPSA Scrum Framework – Practical, Hands-on Scrum at Scale
[4] Understanding the CIPSA Kanban Framework – Practical, Hands-on Kanban at Scale
[5] The CIPSA Framework Clock - A Unique Way
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