What is the Ideal Size of a Scrum Development Team?

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Optimal Development Team size is small enough to remain nimble and large enough to complete significant work within a Sprint.

Fewer than three Development Team members decrease interaction and results in smaller productivity gains. Smaller Development Teams may encounter skill constraints during the Sprint, causing the Development Team to be unable to deliver a potentially releasable Increment.

Having more than nine members requires too much coordination. Large Development Teams generate too much complexity for an empirical process to be useful.

The Product Owner and Scrum Master roles are not included in this count unless they are also executing the work of the Sprint Backlog.

The What is Scrum Blog Series are excerpts from the Scrum Guide by Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland. Offered for license under the Attribution Share-Alike license of Creative Commons, accessible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode and also described in summary form at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/.