Setting up collaboration in an agile project with three Scrum teams

When multiple Scrum teams work on systems within the same chain, collaboration often proves to be the key to success. Each team has its own product backlog and focus, but interdependencies make alignment crucial. How do you ensure that three teams collaborate effectively without losing their autonomy? I will answer this question using the following five steps.

1. Start with a shared vision

A shared product vision is the foundation. All teams must understand which chain goal the project serves, which value for the end user is central, and how their work contributes to it. This vision helps make choices when prioritizing backlog items and prevents teams from optimizing only within their own domain.

Having the same product owner for all three teams can greatly strengthen this. They safeguard the balance between local interests and the chain interest. And by frequently discussing the roadmap with the teams, the vision also comes to life.

2. Establish a structured alignment rhythm

Although each team has its own sprint and sprint goal, a common scaled rhythm works well. This means:

• Joint preparation of features by the information analysts;
• Cross-team intake sessions to detect dependencies early;
• A Scrum of Scrums to share progress and impediments;
• Joint review to demonstrate the whole and gather feedback from a chain perspective.

The goal is not to create extra meeting pressure, but to maintain insight into where teams intersect.

3. Ensure transparency regarding dependencies

Visualize the chain. The product owner uses Jira Plans to have an overview of current and future features to see where work overlaps. Fresh insights from the joint review can be added directly to this.

Additionally, teams can work with feature slicing: dividing a feature into chain-wide verticals, so that all involved teams contribute to a part — resulting in an integrated delivery per feature.

4. Facilitate knowledge sharing and alignment in culture

Collaboration does not stop at process agreements. Create a community of practice for developers, testers, and designers across team boundaries. This ensures that standards, tooling, and quality remain consistent. To achieve this, I use domain-wide sessions where we, among other things, keep the Way of Work constantly up to date.

It also helps to organize regular joint quarterly sessions in which we gather feedback on the past quarter. In doing so, we look not only at our own working methods but rather at the entire chain: what went well in the collaboration between teams, and where did things go wrong?

5. Automate to keep integration smooth

When multiple teams work on components of a single system, CI/CD is indispensable. By automating integration and tests, teams can quickly see if new functionality works within the chain. This shifts the focus from putting out fires to continuous improvement.

Conclusion

Three Scrum teams working on a single chain must shape their collaboration just as consciously as their own sprint. A shared vision, structural alignment, transparent dependencies, shared learning processes, and technical trust together form the backbone. Only then does true collaboration emerge: autonomous where possible, aligned where necessary.

Lysette Richardson
Agile consultant