For the past few years, I have started to hear from more companies telling me something curious: they were strictly following agile practices, but they were not seeing the results they expected. The truth is that many of their practices were not really agile, but I also don't think they should follow the books to the letter.

I will share some posts about the most common problems I have faced in large organizations. Based on my experience, with successes and failures, I will tell you how I have resolved them. Let's start with a frequently asked question:

What is the ideal size of an agile team?

This is a question I receive frequently. If we review the most popular guides, the magic number is usually between 7 and 11 people (there is already a lot of information about this). But for me, the answer is simple: the team should be the size that it really needs.

I’ll tell you a story. One of my clients was trying to follow the golden rule of having no more than 11 members per team, including the Scrum Master, Product Owner, and Technical Leader. According to their reports, no team exceeded that limit. However, when we spoke with the Scrum Masters, we heard numbers like 27 or even 35 people in a single team. If that was true, what was happening? What was the reality: that of the reports or the one the teams were living?

Upon analyzing it, we identified four main points:

1. The leaders already recognized the problem: They were aware that the size of the teams was a challenge and were working on solutions to visualize and manage talent assignments. In fact, everything seemed to be under control in the reports.

2. Talent was moving without a clear plan: The assignment of people was not managed by upper management, but was delegated to the managers, who lent talent to teams with bigger or higher-priority challenges. This caused some teams to end up with up to 15 “borrowed” people during each period.

3. The goal was to have people busy: When there were people who had nothing specific to do, they were assigned tasks that, in many cases, they did not complete because they were not 100% focused on that team. They were just filling that “free” time.

4. Rigid talent assignment structure: Managers did not have the flexibility to move talent according to the needs of the challenge. They had a fixed team structure. At times, they “loaned” the most capable talent to help solve emerging problems.

How did we help to solve the problem?

I won’t lie to you, it was a long and complicated process. It sounds easy when I write it, but in practice, it was quite a challenge. These steps were key:

1. Clearly define the challenges (epics and features).

2. Know the capabilities and availability of the talent.

3. Create flexible structures to form and dissolve teams.

4. Assign teams specifically designed for each challenge.

This Allocation or Staffing process greatly facilitated the organization of the teams. Was it the best solution? I don't know, but it definitely worked for us.

Juan Carlos Santana / Founder at bettter. Head of Strategic Consulting and Organizational Transformation

Do you want to tell me how you have solved it in your experience or learn more about how we did it? Let's have a call! I'm sure interesting ideas will come up.