A Builder’s Playbook For Rapid Coordination in Decentralized Spaces

Back when I was coaching hockey, we had “hell week.” It was a grueling, focused sprint designed to break us down and build us back up as a unit. Everyone knew the goal. Everyone knew the pace. Nobody sat on the sidelines. That same energy, intensity, alignment, shared urgency, is exactly what Web3 teams need when shipping fast.

Now that I’ve swapped the ice for smart contracts and Discords, I’ve been exploring what coordination looks like when you don’t have a coach, a locker room, or even fixed roles. In this piece, I want to break down how to run a sprint that actually works in decentralized ecosystems. Think of it like a game plan for async, pseudonymous teams trying to move fast without breaking trust.

What is a Scrum

Growing up, a “Scrum” was something that you would get a black eye during… maybe more. In Web3 it’s more than just a buzzword tossed around in stand-ups and sprint planning meetings. It’s a framework designed to help teams move fast, stay focused, and build real value. Ultimately, Scrum is built around the idea of breaking big. Complex work into smaller, more manageable chunks. You’re not trying to plan everything upfront and hope it goes well. Instead, you're adapting as you go. Think of it like a hockey season. You have a clear goal. Make the playoffs. But each game, each practice, each shift is a chance to adjust, regroup, and improve. Scrum gives teams that structure: short iterations (called sprints), daily check-ins, and regular moments to pause and reflect. It’s not about micromanaging or doing more work faster, it’s about doing the right work, together, with clarity and purpose. The roles are clear. The Product Owner defines the vision, the Scrum Master clears the path, and the Development Team gets the job done. The magic of Scrum isn't in some fancy tool, it’s in the rhythm it creates. A good Scrum team hums like a well-coached line on the ice: always communicating, always adjusting, always focused on the next best play.

What is Kanban?

The word Kanban comes from Japanese, and it literally means “signboard” or “visual signal.” It has roots in the lean manufacturing movement, most famously at Toyota in the 1940s. Back then, Toyota engineers were looking for a way to improve factory efficiency without the waste that came from overproduction or under-utilized resources. They took inspiration from supermarkets, where shelves are only restocked when products are running low, pulling inventory only when it’s needed. That concept became the foundation of Kanban. A pull-based system where work moves forward only when there’s capacity to handle it. In the factory, that might have looked like physical cards signaling when to refill a part bin. In today’s digital work, it looks like tasks on a board, moving from “To Do” to “Done.”

Kanban was later brought into knowledge work and software development by David J. Anderson in the early 2000s. He took those lean principles from Toyota and adapted them for modern teams who weren’t building cars, but were still trying to manage complex workflows. The core idea remains the same: visualize the work, limit how much is in progress, and manage flow. Unlike Scrum, which gives you a structured playbook of roles, sprints, and ceremonies, Kanban is more fluid. It doesn’t ask you to change your team structure, it works with what you’ve got. You just start with where you are, make your work visible, and begin to evolve your process based on real data and real bottlenecks.

Kanban is quiet but powerful. It doesn’t yell for your attention like some frameworks do. It just reveals what’s actually happening inside your team. Where are things getting stuck? Who’s overloaded? What’s the real pace at which your team delivers? Once you see the work, you can start to improve it. And you do that gradually, not through massive overhauls. It’s like a hockey player who studies film between games. Not to redesign the whole strategy, but to tweak angles, timing, and communication. That’s Kanban. Continuous improvement, one visual signal at a time.

Scrum vs Kanban

Scrum and Kanban both aim to help teams deliver better work, but they take different roads to get there. Scrum is more structured. It works in fixed-length sprints, usually two weeks, with clearly defined roles like the Product Owner and Scrum Master. There are regular ceremonies: sprint planning, daily stand-ups, sprint reviews, and retrospectives. It’s a full-on rhythm, almost like a team following a strict game schedule with pre-game meetings, line changes, and post-game analysis. Kanban, on the other hand, is more fluid and continuous. There are no set timeframes, no mandatory roles, and no required ceremonies. Work just flows. Tasks are pulled when there’s capacity, and progress is tracked visually through columns. Scrum is great when you need predictability and team discipline to push toward specific goals. Kanban thrives in environments with lots of incoming change or where priorities shift quickly. The best part? You don’t have to choose just one. Some teams even blend both, using Scrum for structure and Kanban to monitor flow and spot bottlenecks. It’s not about picking a side, it’s about understanding your team’s needs and finding the system that helps you deliver with clarity, speed, and purpose.

Team Size: Can You Sprint Too Big?

While the Scrum Guide recommends 5–11 people, in the real world, teams have pushed both ends of that spectrum. On the low end, some teams have run sprints with just 2 or 3 members. On the high end, organizations have stretched Scrum to teams of 15 or even 20 people, usually as part of a larger scaled setup.

Let’s start with tiny Scrum teams, just two or three people grinding through a sprint. The pros? Communication is instant. No meetings drag. Everyone wears multiple hats, and you get raw ownership from start to finish. It’s the kind of setup that works well in very early-stage startups or skunkworks projects where agility and speed matter more than process. But the cons hit hard. There’s often a lack of skill diversity, burnout risk is high, and if one person gets sick or pulled away, the whole sprint might crumble.

On the flip side, large Scrum teams. 15 or more people in one sprint can pull in a wide range of skills, experience, and ideas. You get specialists, deeper QA, and often higher throughput. But it’s also a coordination nightmare. Standups become status meetings. People talk over each other. Work overlaps or falls through the cracks. It’s hard to stay focused, and accountability gets diluted.

In most cases, if your team grows beyond 10 or 11, the better move is to split into multiple Scrum teams and align them using frameworks like Nexus or SAFe. That way, you preserve the benefits of small-team speed while scaling across a larger organization.

How Long Should a Sprint Be?

Most of the time, one or two weeks is the sweet spot. A one-week sprint is ideal for quick shipping cycles. Prototypes, content campaigns, or hackathon prep. Two weeks works better for deeper builds. Like smart contract deployments, rebrands, or multi-stakeholder initiatives.

You’ll want to avoid sprints if your goals are vague, your contributors are overextended, or your task is research-heavy with no clear outputs. A sprint should feel like a race, not a retreat.

Laying the Ice: Notion as Your Command Center

Before anyone can sprint, you need a clear runway. And Notion is where that starts. Treat it like a command center, the single source of truth for what’s happening, who’s involved, and why it matters. A well-organized Notion page replaces status meetings, Slack scrolls, and “Who’s doing what again?” messages.

Each sprint starts with a mission statement. This should be short, focused, and outcome-oriented, “Improve contributor onboarding.” You’ll also want a clear timeline. With start and end dates, mid-sprint check-ins, and demo or review deadlines. Use a simple kanban-style board for tracking tasks from backlog to done, along with a contributor table that lists everyone’s role, time commitment, and time zone. This matters in Web3, where your front-end dev might be in Canada and your designer’s in Singapore.

To go deeper, often embed docs, Figma links, GitHub repos, and past research directly into the page. Notion’s new button feature also helps, you can build contributor-specific onboarding flows that auto-populate based on their role or skillset. It’s not just clean. It’s fast, scalable coordination.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYbcgtK0v_Q

Building Momentum: Discord as the Locker Room

Notion is where plans live. But Discord is where the energy happens. It’s your digital locker room. Messy, loud, and full of real-time momentum. That chaos can be a superpower if you give it just enough structure.

Usually a dedicated sprint channel is created where everything related to the sprint gets dropped— Key links, updates, memes, questions. Daily check-ins happen in a pinned thread, with a simple format: yesterday / today / blockers. For voice-heavy teams, a 15-minute optional standup call can do wonders for chemistry and momentum. But async standups work just fine if you’re global or time-crunched.

Tagging contributors with roles makes it easier to coordinate across skill sets. Always make space for a meta-channel. A place where we reflect in real time on how the sprint is going. What’s working, what’s confusing, what needs more context.

Many Web3 sprints die not from lack of talent, but from silence. Discord keeps the blood pumping.

https://x.com/discord

Drivng Alignment: Using Snapshot for Community Buy-In

Once the sprint team ships something tangible: whether it’s a new feature, a governance dashboard, or a content drop. Bring that work to the broader community using Snapshot. It’s fast, free (gasless), and community-friendly.

Build a clear proposal with visual context, a concise explanation of the goal, and two or three options for voting. Also, prime the community ahead of time in Discord, using emoji polls or soft-signal threads. That way, Snapshot isn’t a surprise. It’s the final nod.

You don’t need to vote on everything. Save it for the big moments. New budgets, protocol upgrades, user-facing changes. But done right, Snapshot lets you move fast and earn legitimacy.

Closing the Loop: Post-Sprint Retrospectives

After the sprint ends, Always run a retro. This is sacred space, it’s where process gets sharper and culture gets stronger. Start with a Tally form or Notion survey. Asking contributors, what worked? What didn’t? What was confusing? Who crushed it? What should we change next time?

Then we hop into Discord for an optional voice call. People drop feedback, call out wins, vent a little. It’s casual, but powerful. Retros are how we evolve. In a world without managers, feedback is leadership.

Final Whistle

Web3 isn’t just changing how we build, it’s changing who builds, where, and why. But all that openness brings new coordination challenges. Sprints give us a way to inject urgency, create shared purpose, and actually ship.

I’m not romantic about any one tool or framework. What matters is the rhythm: set the stage, align the team, move fast, reflect, and improve. Rinse and repeat.

Sprinting in Web3 isn’t just about shipping faster. It’s about building trust at speed, culture through action, and momentum through shared wins. If you’re experimenting with these models, I’d love to hear how you’re running your sprints. And what you’re learning along the way.

As always my Dm’s on X sam orth are open for more on this topic, other questions, or talk shop.

Lets get it together