A strong Product Owner can successfully work with multiple Scrum teams—especially when those teams are truly cross-functional and aligned around a shared product or value stream.

A dependency exists when a Scrum Team needs work from another team before they can complete their own work. For example, a development team may be waiting on the SQL team to make a database change. Or Human Resources may need software changes before updating the onboarding process. In short, dependencies are those times when one team is waiting on another. Dependencies are the number one problem when you start to scale Agile beyond just one team. So what can we do about it?

Working in parallel creates walls to progress.

The image above shows some negative consequences when teams are not cross-functional. Some ideas stand the test of time, such as the value of cross-functional teams in new product development. Cross-functional teams are teams that have all of the skills necessary to deliver value. They contain diverse skill sets, which enables them to address complex problems. The roots of this concept can be traced back to the groundbreaking article, 'The New New Product Development Game,

Scrum, the most popular Agile framework, has seen significant growth in adoption over the past few years. According to the annual State...

Scrum is by far the most popular Agile framework. According to the 16th annual “State of Agile” report from Digital.ai, 87% of agile...

The process of delivering a product can be intricate, involving numerous activities that need to be coordinated effectively. To tackle...

A central feature of the Scrum framework is the concept of a cross-functional team. But what exactly is cross-functionality, and how is it beneficial? Let's explore this topic in an agile software development context. Traditional project management approaches often organize teams based on specialized roles and responsibilities. You have developers who write code, testers who ensure quality, designers who create user interfaces, etc. Each team member has a specific area of ex