Nexus (n): a relationship or connection between people or things

No, it’s neither the famous Google phone, nor Nokia “Connecting people” but rather a relationship between people or things. But what does that exactly mean? It feels like a general concept, doesn’t it? Today, my friend, we will take that general idea you have about Nexus and magically transform it into valuable knowledge that you can use and/or promote in your company. If you’re interested, keep reading. If not, think of a little baby Panda crying. Alone. In the rain. Looking at you.

What is it?

Nexus is a lightweight framework developed by Ken Schwaber, co-author of Scrum Guide. Thus, its baseline is Scrum. It does not provide all the answers, but instead provides the fundamental guidance to support sustainable, complex software product development at scale. If your company has one product and many Scrum teams working on it, you know how dependencies between teams become hard to handle. Thus, the delivery of the magnificent increment your team works so hard on, will be delayed. How do you overcome these delays? How can you prevent dependencies or how can you solve them within a day? Nexus might be the answer. Best applied to multiple Scrum teams, 3 – 9 teams, working on the same product.

Considering that your company already has applied Scrum framework, you won’t have problems with Nexus roles, ceremonies and artifacts as they are quite similar and complementary. We will now proceed to describe the basics of Nexus.

Nexus additional role

In addition to your existing Scrum teams, Nexus includes a new role, Nexus Integration Team (NIT). This new role has its own Product Owner, Scrum Master and one or more Nexus Integration Team Members(often also members of the individual Scrum Teams). The NIT is accountable to make sure that there is always a “Done”, Integrated Increment and that the dependencies are visible and dealt with as needed.

Nexus Ceremonies

In Nexus, a Sprint starts with Nexus Sprint Planning, where the activities of all Scrum Teams in a Nexus for a single Sprint are coordinated. Frequently a big room planning is used for this ceremony, in order to make interaction between teams nice and easy, and help dependencies be dealt with as promptly as possible. The result is a Nexus Sprint Goal, a shared Definition of Done and a refined Nexus Backlog.

The Nexus Sprint continues with Nexus Daily Scrum held everyday before the Daily Scrum. During this event the team starts focusing on the Nexus’ Sprint Goal by inspecting the progress towards it and asks these three questions: 

• Was the previous day’s work successfully integrated? If not, why not? 
• What new dependencies or impacts have been identified?
• What information needs to be shared across teams in the Nexus?

Throughout the Sprint, a Nexus Refinement could happen as often as necessary to identify dependencies across teams, to slice the Product Backlog Items until they are independent enough to be worked on by every Scrum Team. The result is a refined Nexus Backlog and items ready for selection during the next Nexus Sprint Planning event.

The Nexus Sprint Review is held at the end of each Sprint to gather feedback on the Integrated Increment. Since all Scrum Teams worked for the Increment, the individual Scrum Teams do not hold their Review. The result is a revised Product Backlog and valuable feedback.

Lastly, the Nexus Sprint Retrospective is the opportunity for the Nexus to inspect and adapt itself. It occurs after the Nexus Sprint Review and before the next Nexus Sprint Planning. Representatives of all Scrum Teams gather to share insights affecting multiple teams. The issues discussed are then brought back into the teams’ regular retrospectives.

Nexus Artifacts

There is a single Nexus Product Backlog from which the teams pick their items. The Product Owner is responsible for its content, prioritization and transparency. The items can be considered “Ready” when teams can select them with minimal or no dependencies at all. 

The Nexus Sprint Backlog is a piece of the Product Backlog of the individual Scrum Teams. It is updated daily as part of the Nexus Daily Scrum.

Last but not least, the Integrated Increment that sums up all the integrated work performed by individual Scrum Teams.  Must be a piece of working software and potentially releasable, thus meeting the Definition of Done. 

Hope you enjoyed reading this article and that you learned the Nexus basics from it. The little baby Panda bear is now smiling. Eating bamboo. Looking at you.

Inspired by Nexus Guide and Fredrik Wendt’s article on Nexus Framework.