Swarming
A practice where multiple Developers temporarily focus together on a single work item to finish it quickly, often used to unblock a bottleneck.
What it means
Swarming is not part of official Scrum but a common lean and Agile practice that supports the value of focus: instead of everyone starting new items, the team concentrates effort to finish what is closest to Done.
It works especially well when a WIP limit is hit, forcing the team to help clear existing work before pulling anything new, reinforcing flow over individual busyness.
Common mistakes
Swarming can reduce cycle time significantly for the swarmed item but temporarily reduces overall throughput on other items, a trade-off teams should make deliberately, not by default.
Example
When a critical bug blocks the Sprint Goal, three Developers swarm on it together instead of continuing their separate tasks.