Grow-Split-Grow

Play Description

Also Known As/Similar To

This pattern comprises of three techniques: Grow and Split (Mitosis), Split and Seed, Seed to Oak, and Grafting.

Pattern Group(s)

Agile Transformation, Scaling Structures

Challenge Categories

Growing Capacity, Spreading Expertise in an Agile Transformation

Challenges Addressed

This pattern addresses two different challenges:

1. The need to increase capacity to meet demand by adding individuals and creating more agile teams.
2. The need to bring new team members up to speed on the team’s practices/ecosystem.
3. The desire to improve capabilities on existing teams, making scaling more effective overall. This assumes that individual teams need to be effective before scaling.

These challenges are related to the difficulty of sharing tacit knowledge (experimental knowledge).

Definition

The ‘Grow-Split-Grow’ pattern scales agile teams by promoting both incremental expansion and deliberate division. This pattern demonstrates how a team grows while remaining productive. As Fred Brooks noted, adding team members can often detract from productivity instead of enhancing it, and coordination becomes more difficult. Growing from one agile team to two agile teams is a better solution than hiring externally. The new team members adapt through osmotic communication – learning by working with people, therefore sharing tacit knowledge.

This model emphasizes adaptability, allowing teams to evolve while ensuring alignment with organizational goals and minimizing disruption during the transition. The process repeats as needed, enabling sustainable and scalable growth. With three techniques under this pattern, organizations should select the one that best suits their needs.

Grow and Split (also known as Mitosis)
This pattern involves the gradual expansion of a Scrum Team until its size affects performance. At this point, the team splits into two smaller, autonomous units, ensuring cross-functionality and continued product focus. The split teams carry over the original team’s culture and knowledge, minimizing disruptions and maintaining continuity. This approach supports controlled, sustainable scaling while keeping team size manageable and ensuring both teams remain aligned with Agile principles.

Split and Seed
This pattern scales Agile teams by splitting a high-performing team and “seeding” the new teams with experienced members. This preserves the knowledge, culture, and practices of the original team, allowing the new teams to quickly adapt and function effectively. It is ideal for swift scaling while ensuring consistency across teams and promoting growth.

Seed-to-Oak
This pattern follows a bottom-up approach, starting with one or two experienced individuals who form the “seed” of an Agile team. As they demonstrate Agile practices, the team gradually expands, growing into a fully functioning unit. This pattern emphasizes gradual, organic growth, spreading Agile principles throughout the organization, making it ideal for fostering Agile adoption in new or less mature companies.

Grafting
This pattern involves placing an experienced agile team or individuals into a non-agile department to transfer agile knowledge and practices. Similar to grafting in gardening, this approach helps the recipient department become agile more quickly. Success depends on maintaining a sufficient ratio of agile to non-agile members to ensure effective demonstration, as well as the donor department’s ability to afford losing key contributors without sacrificing its effectiveness. Grafting can also be used to address knowledge and understanding gaps that are adversely impacting team performance by inserting individuals who can address challenges by example and internal coaching.

In Frameworks

The Scrum Patterns Group (ScrumPlop): Grow-and-Split (called Mitosis in this pattern) is recommended as the best technique for growing teams. This pattern emphasizes the benefit of incremental and piecemeal growth as the most effective means of growing capacity efficiency.

Extreme Programming (XP): XP recommends the Split-and-Seed technique, where the original team is split in half, the new team members can learn via pair programming, and this approach ensures that the teams can maintain close collaboration while keeping their work focused and streamlined.

Scrum@Scale: Scrum@Scale recommends leveraging a Team Reference Model, where one or more agile teams develop sufficient agile skills as teams that they can be constructed into a network of teams (Scrum@Scale).

How To Use It:

To implement the model pattern effectively, follow these steps to ensure a smooth team division and maintain high performance levels in both the original and newly formed teams:

1. Decide which pattern suits your organization:
   Choose between Split and Seed, Seed-to-Oak, Grow and Split (Mitosis) or Grafting based on team maturity, goals, and urgency.
2. Determine the length of transition:
   Set the duration of transitioning, depending on the pattern and team readiness.
3. Implement the transition:
   Begin the growth process, ensuring smooth team division while maintaining continuity.

Tags/Keywords

Team scaling, Agile growth, incremental team expansion, cross-team coordination, efficient scaling, Scrum techniques, team maturity, controlled growth