Nexus as a way of working, Yay or Nay

[Arpita]

Hello Everyone; 

I have been doing project management for a while now and I am always on the lookout for good project management practices, tools, methods etc...

I had read about the nexus methodology a while back but did not give it much thought as that was not something I was looking to incorporate at the time but with recent development within my company, I am now thinking about pitching it to the folks. 

But before I do that I would love to hear from those of you who have or had used it and what is your verdict on the same.

[Scott Theus]

Hi @Arpita ,

I've used something similar to Nexus; the framework for our "Scrum of Scrums" was almost the same, but at the time I had not heard of the Nexus method. Each Scrum team had their own product and sprint backlogs, but they were both pulled from the overall program backlog and the team leaders met daily to coordinate the work. The Scrum teams focused on their own area (front-end, communication layer, edge development, and hardware design and development) but worked together to plan the sprints and ensure all the dependencies were covered. 

For Nexus, there a a few questions you should answer before you pitch it to the PMO. First and most important, are your teams currently working in Scrum and performing well? If they are still in the "Forming," "Storming," or "Norming" stage of team development then  they my struggle with Nexus.  If they are a mix of "Performing" and Norming"  then they could be ready for Nexus.

Second, how strong are your Scrum Masters and Product Owners? Do you have good leaders within the Scrum teams and good communication throughout? Nexus requires a high degree of coordination between the teams and with the Scrum Master and PO. 

Third, what is the make-up of the Scrum teams? Are they cross functional or specialized in one area? In my case the teams were specialized and the components of the product line were different enough that a software engineer on one team would not necessarily be able to work on the component of a different team because it required a different skill set. 

My guess is that you are looking into Nexus because you have good Scrum teams who work on their own section of the product, but they are not coordinating with each other well; possibly because the PO(s) are not coordinating with each other. If this is the case then you will probably also need to do some reorganization of the teams.  

Moving to a Nexus framework will shake up the organization, but if you have good leadership and by-in from the teams it could work well. 

Hope this helps, 

-Scott

[Arpita]

Hey Scott, 

Thanks for the input... it definitely helps... 

The only reason I was looking at Nexus was that we have projects that are spread across various teams and it is currently causing problems... 

Reflecting on your point on if the scrum teams are well-performing... I'd say each team is still trying to find their rhythm maybe I could try introducing the scrum of scrums rather than nexus because the current issue is with communication.

Your message definitely helped.

Thanks :) 

[Veronique DUFOUR]

Hi @Arpita 

I haven't use it but maybe this site could give you a little bit of information.
https://www.scrum.org/open-assessments/nexus-open
Good luck with your quest :)

[Arpita]

Hey Veronique,

This assessment did help in understand nexus better... Thanks :)