Yes definitely there can be multiple teams for the same project. For example, the UI team, Service layer team, etc. The team can be feature teams or component teams and can be geographically distributed.

Scrum Master role is very challenging in this type of multi-team handling collaboration and coordination. The reason is the time gap between two different teams which makes it even more challenging.

But there are many ways by which it can be handled. There are 2 suggested frameworks available

• LESS-Large Scale Scrum

The idea is to manage the complexity of large-scale development with ease.

It recommends multiple teams with the same product owner with multiple sprint backlogs but with one product backlog.

Process-wise LeSS is same as that of scrum but with slight modification. Sprint planning is split into two parts. One planning consists of representatives from all the teams where the team decides about “WHAT” the Product Backlog items to be built in the next sprint. The second planning meeting will be done by the individual team about how the PBI needs to be built.

The end of the sprint should ALSO be synchronized. The sprint review meeting should be held in common with all the business leaders and team and the stakeholders.

Similarly, retrospection can be a help in 2 parts. One which is common to all the whole project team and one with the individual team so that the focus can be on individual team issues and work towards them to resolve them.

• SaFe- Scaled Agile framework.

Refer to interview questions Article? Question 17.

When to use which framework?

1. When you need to coordinate with hundreds or thousands of people in a big organization. SaFe is the recommended framework.
2. When the transition from the Component level team to feature level team is difficult.

SaFe makes it easy even to handle the component level team through RTE and Program Board.

How to coordinate?

Scrum of Scrums: This is one of the meetings which happens daily with all the scrum masters and CHIEF Product Owner can facilitate it. It is the same as that of daily scrum but the focus is on a team level.

Each team sends out one member to participate and answer the following questions:

• What did the team finish/achieved?
• What does the team plan to finish today?
• Are there any impediments? If yes how we can resolve them.
• Common Retrospectives.
• Common Sprint Planning
• Common sprint reviews

Sprint Scheduling-All the teams can start and ends at the same time. But there can be a difference in that also. It makes our coordination and communication easy. They can also have 1-2 days gap in STARTING the next sprint which is good for product owner not to attend all the meetings

Effort Estimations: A very important aspect of Scrum Planning. In the CASE of the same technique of effort, estimation should be used like Planning poker, shirt size estimation, etc. If story points are used all teams have to agree on the same metric and a common scale to use.