Engineering Leadership

Engineering Leadership

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Engineering Leadership
Engineering Leadership
Software Engineering team structure that works
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Software Engineering team structure that works

My overview of what specific team structures worked and which didn't!

Gregor Ojstersek's avatar
Gregor Ojstersek
Oct 16, 2024
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Engineering Leadership
Engineering Leadership
Software Engineering team structure that works
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Intro

When building Software Engineering teams, this is very important to keep in mind:

It’s all about what is going to bring the most value to the business and what is going to make the teams efficient the most when solving problems.

And there is definitely not a one-size fits all teams here.

In today’s article, I’ll be sharing my view on which structure worked best for me for all 3 different kinds of teams and also what structure didn’t work so well.

I’ve worked within various of different teams as an engineer and a team lead and then also built a lot of different teams for different projects as an engineering leader.

Last week, we did a deep dive on what engineering org structure worked best for me. If you haven’t yet read the last week's article, you can do that here: Engineering org structure that works (paid article). Now we are digging deeper into the fine details of teams.

This article is for paid subscribers and here is the index of the sections of this article:

  • Cross-functional teams or teams based on their function?

🔒 There are 3 different kinds of cross-functional teams

🔒 Growth team structure
🔒 Growth team structure that works best for me
🔒 Problems and issues I’ve seen in Growth teams

🔒 Platform team structure
🔒 Platform team structure that works best for me
🔒 Problems and issues I’ve seen in Platform teams

🔒 Product team structure
🔒 Product team structure that works best for me
🔒 Problems and issues I’ve seen in Product teams

Let’s get straight into it!

Cross-functional teams or teams based on their function?

As said above, we need to build teams in a way that they solve the most business problems.

Cross-functional teams are the way to go.

We are focusing on the actual things to be delivered and less on specific functions that way.

That automatically enables the mindset of: What do we need in order to deliver value to the business and delight our customers.

And there are 3 different kinds of cross-functional teams that I like to use, let’s get into that next!

There are 3 different kinds of cross-functional teams

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