Can Scrum give its real value by running multiple projects in parallel with only one team?

Based on my experience I can confirm that the key to Scrum is to have a dedicated team focused on a single project at a time. Agile teams must be dedicated and focused.

If you have some specialists that can’t contribute to the entire development process (content authors, graphics people, business process analysts, etc.) get them trained up on some different tasks so they can contribute for other different development activities.

Scrum guide says “Scrum Teams are self-organizing and cross-functional”

Please let me just add small hints about the meaning of a cross-functional team:

Cross-functional team means that the team developing the project have all the needed skills to deliver the product without referring to any other external part.

But why not have a cross-functional team members (all the team members can do a different activity and tasks) and at any time any team members can work on any issue from the project without any difficulty?

As described by the “T-SHAPED SKILLS” a combination of those two (Specialities and general skills), being a specialist for one thing and a generalist for a few others, especially people skills, gives a really powerful combination.

The idea of agile teams in product development is to be cross-functional and self-organizing, meaning all members need to have some specific competences, but all members also need general competences that allow them to deliver everything by themselves and work together efficiently. In agile teams, there is no room for general project managers.

I think having this could help also establishing a focused team with a shared technical knowledge besides constraints in choosing team members per project will disappear.

Team members could choose their colleagues to form the project teams without any technical constraints.

So, does running projects in parallel kills your schedule?

Yes, absolutely. Some numbers could help in proving this, as said :

“in god we trust all others must bring data”, I will bring data with me today :)

Let us assume that we have the following inputs and based on them, we will run some scenarios.

Inputs :

• We have 6 projects running in parallel.
• Each project is scheduled to take 3 months.
• The number of people working on these project is 6.
• All team members working on all the running projects.
• All the projects are started at the same date.

Scenario 1: Each person works on a single project in team

• 1/6 speed of delivery per project gives 18 months of delivery for all projects, each one will deliver his own project.
• No team spirit.
• No information sharing, in case of vacation of illness of the project owner , product delivery will be automatically behind schedule.
• Pushing specialities.
• No Help and support.
• No one to motivate and work can be a bit boring.
• No diversities in ideas . Rare to point to the best solution satisfying the customer value.
• Too much Stress since only the person working on this project will be responsible for the result.

Scenario 2: 1 sprint per project, switching between projects.

• Every 7th sprint work on project, 6 Sprints between 2 sprints related to the same project.
• Too long time between project work — not regular incremental value for project deliveries.
• Easy to forget the context and effort is needed to restore it, we need an effort to manage the interruptions.
• In case we use a 2-weeks sprint, the first product will be delivered after about ~14 –15 months.

Scenario 3: 6 projects during a one single sprint

• Requires too much detailed split of tasks just to fit into one sprint.
• Very little incremental build per project, difficult to deliver increments with customer value per project (Potentially shippable). The Sprint and incremental delivery have no sense and therefore Scrum and Agile become obsolete.
• The first product will be delivered after about ~14 — 15 months.
• Switching between issues on different 6 projects will have a direct impact on the product quality. NO focus on a fixed clear goal during one Sprint.

Scenario 4: Serialized work- Prioritize projects and start (recommended)

• Team works on single project after project (the list of the project is prioritized): One of the Scrum Values which is the focus is achieved.
• First project development started and delivered after 3 months: Customer will not wait for 18 months to receive a product.
• Second project development started after 3rd month, delivered after 6th month
• And so on …
• 6th project started after 15th month, delivered after 18th month.
• Team highly focused and concentrated only on one single project, intensive research and collaboration with customer. Agile values are applied “Customer collaboration over contract negotiation”.
• Whole team has general good knowledge about all projects: Sharing knowledge and converging to a cross-functional team members.
• No waste time on context switching.
• Require good team cooperation, good scrum master to remove impediments and solve conflict to not delay the delivery.
• Team motivated with a clear product vision and with good product quality.
• Better product quality.
• Any one can join the backlog grooming session. (in case we have multiple project, not all the person will be able to join or have interest to join).

As you can see, the best Scenario is number 4, because it grants:

1- Team collaboration and better communication.

2- More productivity and the team deliver increments much faster.

3- It allows applying Scrum rules and Agile practices.

4- Customer will be satisfied having the first product after 3 months instead of 18 months.

That’s why I do believe , multitasking (running multiple product development in parallel and activities in parallel) kills our productivity and decrease our efficiency and therefore scrum will not give its real value for multiple running projects.

The more projects we start in parallel the less efficient scrum will be.

And you, did you run multiple projects in parallel using Scrum? What do you think about this? Is this the right way to increase our product quality and satisfy our customer?

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I look forward to your comments.