Running scrum on a very small team is a bit confusing. You start wondering why you have all this formal meetings to communicate just with 1 other developer, or agree with your product owner. You wonder why you would set up a stand up meeting, when you could just tell your partner what’s your status, and so on.

However, I found that some of the concepts of scrum can be applied more generally at the organization level. As an example, we decided after I introduced scrum to my colleagues that the daily scrum could involve everybody. After 1 month practicing this, I can attest of the efficiency of it. A daily stand up meeting is a benefit to everybody.

• The sales people get to know more about what’s being worked on in the development team. they have a better overview of where the product they are selling is heading, and they are able to answer some technical questions.
• The support feedback is directed to everybody, and we are now all aware of the issues we face.
• Developers are aware of what others developers are working on and what kind of problems they are trying to solve, even if not working on the same project.
• Everybody gets more feedback of the current sales, and the current health of the business.

There is probably more to add to this list. The daily scrum never takes more than 15 minutes to us, and we are 10 people. Maybe the fact that we do it just before lunch helps to keep it short ;). Anyway, it solved many issues that we wouldn’t even have noticed otherwise! I can also see everybody getting more concerned about the general objectives of the company. People are not anymore just doing their job. They are now part of a team and each of us works towards the same goal. We push in the same direction. Isn’t that what scrum is about?

If you are a small organization and you don’t know how to implement some Scrum concepts, or just how to create a team feeling, this is where you have to start :