How to effectively design agile team structures

What are agile team structures & why are they important?

Simply put, building agile team structures involves organising people into effective project groups. Instead of traditional top-down management, agile teams emphasise on collaboration, flexibility and delivering value quickly. Here are some common agile team structures:

• Cross-functional teams: Members have different skills needed for the project, like design, coding and testing. This ensures that all aspects of the work are covered without relying on specialists outside the team.
• Self-organising teams: Members have the freedom to decide how to do their work. They manage themselves, assign tasks and make decisions together, which boosts accountability and creativity.
• Scrum teams: These teams work in short bursts called sprints, usually 1-4 weeks long. Each team has specific roles like Product Owner (representing the customer), Scrum Master (facilitating the process) and Development Team (doing the work).
• Kanban teams: Workflows are visualised on a board with columns representing stages of completion. Team members move tasks across the board as they progress, helping everyone see what’s happening and where help might be needed.

These agile structures help teams adapt quickly to changes, collaborate effectively, deliver work faster and continuously improve their processes. They’re essential for modern businesses aiming to stay competitive and responsive to customer needs.

Agile team structures chart example

Below you can see an example of a best practice agile team structures in org.manager, a solution that allows you to create sophisticated views of your workforce, helping to automate a whole lot of manual work. In this example you can see:

1. Org chart view: Inspired by Spotify’s agile team structures which consists of Squads, Tribes, Chapters and Guilds. The Spotify model is a flat hierarchy leveraging a collaborative work culture that allows its employees to move freely between and work on various projects.
2. Network chart view: Shows how employees are connected to each other. It uses dots (nodes) to represent individuals/groups and lines (edges) to show the connections between them. This view is particularly powerful when using the visualisation rules, as they allow you to easily pinpoint any areas of concern across your teams.

Streamlined planning and organisation: Access a tool that allows you to seamlessly organise teams, assign tasks and track progress. This simplifies the planning process, making it easier for managers to allocate resources effectively and ensure that all team members are aligned with project goals.

Efficient resource management: By using an agile team design tool, you can optimise resources by easily identifying available capacity, skill gaps or overallocation of staff.

Clarity of roles and responsibilities: By providing visuals that clearly explain the roles and responsibilities of each team member within the agile framework, you can ensure that everyone understands their duties and who to approach for specific tasks or issues.

By using dedicated software, you can share your real-time agile team structures with anyone in your organisation. org.manager is Australian hosted and browser based, making it easy to access and share on any device.