Implementing Scrum Workflows — Looking for Cross-Team Collaboration Tips

Hi everyone,

We’ve been implementing Scrum workflows using our Monday.com ecosystem and I’m curious to hear how others are doing this.

We currently have seven Scrum teams delivering work in four-week sprints, all aligned to the same sprint calendar. Because we work in academic research, we opted for longer sprints to account for the nature of our work and our reliance on external collaborators.

Each Scrum team has its own board with:

  • Items committed to the current sprint

  • A next sprint section for sprint planning

  • A backlog for future work

We originally maintained a centralized board that captured high-level features (lab-wide objectives) and mirrored each team’s board. This allowed us to see which team’s work related to larger initiatives and provide a central communication hub. This was an attempt to replicate the epics and features you may see in industry. However, we’ve recently decided to retire this approach because of the amount of duplicate administrative work it created.

Now, I’m exploring better ways to foster cross-team collaboration and track delivery of larger initiatives that span multiple Scrum teams and sprints within Monday.com. I’m trying to avoid using subitems since they require heavy maintenance when working in and reporting on sprints—converting to items, creating new parent items, moving to new parents, etc. In other tools like ADO, I found it easier to manage multiple levels of work items and visualize related work.

If your organization is doing something similar, I’d love to hear what’s worked well for you!

Thanks in advance,

Max

1 Like

We are having a similar challenge. We’re currently looking to use subitems in an overarching Initiatives board as way to identify different workstreams, connect the boards, and monitor high-level progress. Also looking to use automation/workflow to link the boards. This is all new to us and super interested to hear how others are managing cross-team collaboration as well.

@mlevin401 @cherzog You might want to take a look at the Analytics & Reports by Screenful, which can generate burndown charts for sprints across multiple boards. You can set a quick filter that allows viewing a burndown of any individual board. Here’s an example chart:

The chart can display top-level items, subitems, or both. You can click through the numbers to see the items.

In addition to Burndown, we also have CFD, Scatter plot, and Forecasting, among many other charts. You can see all charts in the Tour page.

Here’s a guide for getting started with the free trial.

Hey Max,

We do something similar with linked boards and dashboards instead of a big central board. Each team manages its own board, and high-level initiatives live on a separate board with links to team items. Dashboards pull progress across teams, and it keeps things simple without duplicating work.

Mirrored columns and tags help a lot too.