Learning Agile Question - Small Teams

[Graham Smith]

In my experience Agile works fairly well for managing medium or large teams but not so well for small teams (up to five developers). I think this is because small teams naturally synchronize anyway and therefore don't need the additional structure agile brings. Would you agree and can you offer any suggestions of how to tailor agile for small teams. In particular I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on how you could use agile ideas for very small (micro) teams of say two developers.

[Junilu Lacar]

Graham Smith wrote:In my experience Agile works fairly well for managing medium or large teams but not so well for small teams (up to five developers).

That's actually the opposite of my experience and I'm pretty sure the bulk of the literature on Agile recommends smaller rather than larger teams. When you have more than 10 people on the team, the usual recommendation is to split them into two teams. What didn't work so well for smaller teams in your experience?

[Jeanne Boyarsky]

I agree with Junilu that scrum is just fine for small teams. With two people, consider which agile practices could help you - pair programming?(to sync ideas) A retrospective? (over lunch?)