Team Patterns: How to Structure an Engineering Team?

Kenneth LangeTech Leadership

This is the first post in a blog series about how top-performing software companies are organizing their engineering teams.

You don’t need to network a lot before you realize that software companies are organizing their teams in very different ways.

But after you’ve heard about a few dozens companies, you start to detect patterns. You start to realize that even though there are lots of small variations then their team structures can all be boiled down to a handful of general patterns.

In my experience there are four general team patterns that most companies follow. Yes, they have tweaked them to fit their circumstances, but the overall idea behind the pattern remains the same:

  1. Technology Team: The team is formed around a technology, such as Android. For example, a team of mobile developers who build and maintain a mobile app.
  2. Matrix Team: The developers report to a Development Manager, but they are “lend out” to cross-functional product or project teams where they do their daily work.
  3. Product Team: The team is oriented around a product area, such as billing. It’s cross-functional, but all people on the team, regardless of their specialization, report to the same line manager.
  4. Self-Managed Product Team: The team is oriented around a product area. But the management of the team is divided into technical leadership, typically handled by an Engineering Lead on the team, and people management, typically handled by an Engineering Manager outside the team.

My plan is that each post in this blog series will explore one of these team patterns in depth to identify its strengths and weaknesses — and then spice the whole thing up with plenty of examples of top-performing companies who are actually using the team pattern in the real-world.

The blog series will continue over the next month. I’ll add links to the posts in the series below when they have been published:

  1. Team Patterns: How to Structure an Engineering Team?
  2. Team Pattern #1: The Technology Team
  3. Team Pattern #2: The Matrix Team
  4. Team Pattern #3: The Product Team
  5. Team Pattern #4: The Self-Managed Product Team

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