Ideal Skill Ratios in Pods

So are, we have talked about pods, ideal team Agile team structures, and the proper mix of developer skills in the pod. In this post, I would like to describe the needs for other skills in the pod.

An ideal pod would contain:

• 4-6 pairs of developers (8-12 total)
• 2-3 business analysts
• 2-3 testers
• 1 ambassador (aka project manager or iteration manager)
• 1 customer or customer representative (rotating on need)

So adding to our pod formulas:

Analysts + Testers + Managers + Customers = 80% (Developers)

So if I calculate how many programmers a project should need, I add another 80% to cover the other roles. So between this ratio and the productivity uplift I give to the programmer skills (5:2:1 for Masters, Journeymen, and Apprentices), I have the tools for doing my Agile project plans for a pod. Of course, this is just the starting point for the plans. I adjust skills constantly throughout the project.

For example in the first release of the project I am currently working on, we ran it successfully with 3 pairs of developers, two analysts, a single tester, and a single project manager. The next release had the same 3 pairs of developers, but only a single analyst and a single tester; metrics showed we should have had a second tester, however. Overall, however, the project is successfully running light on non-developer resources.

On the other hand, an early project on which I worked at ThoughtWorks ran its last release with one project manager, one combined customer/business analyst, 3 pairs of developers, and over a dozen testers! The customer was writing the stories herself, perfectly able to keep work flowing to the developers. The developers were a Master-heavy mix, and produced accordingly. This high productivity drove the need for up to 17 testers at one point; no investment in automated acceptance tests had been made.

Despite these examples to the contrary, I like the above ratios for planning. It is my starting point, and I adjust accordingly.