Scaled Agile, scaling product development with Nexus

Introduction to Nexus

Nowadays, IT companies are not asking themselves, whether they should implement the Agile approach. They are asking how to scale the Agile in their organizations. In this post, we will cover Nexus, which is a Scaled Scrum framework. It is used to develop large, complex IT products, which requires between 3 to 9 Scrum Teams.

As Products are emerging and getting larger, usually one, single Scrum Team (up to 10 people) is not enough to develop product features on time. That’s the reason behind scaling Agile. We need to get more people on board to do not fell behind the competition and satisfy market requirements with success.

However, to understand how to scale Scrum with the Nexus, first let’s tap briefly into that Scrum is. I have already covered this topic in this post.

Scrum by Scrum.org

Briefly, what the Scrum is?

Scrum is a development framework used by teams all around the world, use to build complex products is constantly changing, and unpredictable environment. It is based on empiricism. Scrum is a framework based on three roles, which are the:

1. Product Owner — know what to do,
2. Development Team — know how to do,
3. Scrum Master — improve the process.

Scrum Team = PO + SM + Dev Team (in total less than 10 people)

The framework is built by 5 ceremonies:

1. Sprint — timebox, we are going to develop some part of product precise time frame (between 1 to 4 weeks). We should define how long the Sprint is (i.e 2 weeks) at the very beginning, and stick to this number,
2. Sprint Planning — plan what to do in the Sprint,
3. Daily Scrum — daily team catch-up to check the progress, problems, next work to do,
4. Sprint Review — investigate what we have done during the Sprint,
5. Sprint Retrospective — meeting for the team to investigate what went well, what can be improved in the next iterations.

And, scrum has 3 Artifacts:

1. Product Backlog — List of all work to be done to develop and deploy the product. This is an emerging list,
2. Sprint Backlog — work planned for a given Sprint,
3. Increment — the result of each Sprint is an Increment, which must be integrated with all other Increments to build a potentially shippable product.

So, briefly speaking, we are working in iterations, each Iteration is building and Increment, which is Integrated with all other increments.

Scrum

What the Nexus is?

Quick introduction to Nexus

Nexus is a scaled Agile framework, or to be precise Scaled Scrum framework, which allows up to 9 Scrum Teams to collaborate on one Product, therefore one single Product Backlog. Why use Nexus, instead of SAFe, DAD, SoS, LeSS? Well, everything depends on the problem you want to solve and your organization.

Nexus is a very simple approach with which about 90 people can work on a single Backlog. It does not require much more roles and is easy to implement. More information, which Scaled Agile framework should you chose, you can find in my post “Scaled Agile, what frameworks can you use?”.

Nexus — scaled Agile by Scrum.org

How does the Nexus enlarge Scrum?

Nexus allows for scaling Scrum by the implementation of several, additional elements.

Artefacts

1. Nexus Sprint Backlog — remember the Sprint Backlog? It is the amount of work the Scrum Team is going to develop during a Sprint. Now we need to find the amount of work, that will be covered by several teams.

Ceremonies

1. Nexus Sprint Planning — allows Nexus Team to synchronize activities among Scrum Teams for a given Sprint. It consists of:

• Checking the product backlog — what is to be done to develop and implement Product,
• Formulating Nexus Goal — what is the Sprint Goal for all team,
• Scrum Team sprint planning — each Scrum Team is doing the planning session on its own, during which Team members are formulating Sprint Backlog for its team,

2. Refinement — putting more details into Product Backlog elements. It allows Scrum Teams to find dependencies, discover problems in advance, and improve transparency.

3. Nexus Daily Scrum — if you have one Scrum Team, the team members are catching up every day. Now it is the same but on a higher level. Delegated Scrum Team members are going to catch up together to talk about dependencies, progress etc.

4. Nexus Sprint Review — all previously mentioned ceremonies (1–3, and 5) are additional, however, this one replaces Sprint Review on the single team level. Because the main objective for Nexus is to create an Integrated Increment (all of the work done by the teams must be integrated), there is no point to review the output of each team separately,

5. Nexus Sprint Retrospective — inspect how collaboration across multiple teams went well.

• Is there any Undone work left?
• Did we generate Technical Debt?
• Are all of the artifacts properly Integrated?

New Role — Nexus Integration Team

Nexus Integration Team (NIT) — consists of Product Owner, Scrum Master, and usually members of each Scrum Team. What is important, a member of NIT can be any person that can improve development process. Those can be Solution Architects, domain SME’s, Operations, Security members or other staff that have unique knowledge lacking Scrum Team members.

The NIT is accountable for Product value maximization and ensures that Integrated Increment is delivered at least every Sprint.

Nexus — scaled Scrum framework

For the End

Nexus is based on Scrum, and it adds a minimal set of roles, artefacts and ceremonies to successfully develop Integrated Increment developed by 3–9 Scrum Teams. It is very easy to understand Nexus if you have a background in Scrum. However, if you do not have experience with Scrum or your team members did not work with Scrum previously, you should wait. First, try to implement Scrum in a single team, then try to scale it. If you want to eat an elephant, do it with small pieces. In this case, it is the same. Start small with Scrum, then scaled it to Nexus.