The Squad/Tribe Engineering Team Model: A Guide to Agile at Scale
In the world of agile development, scaling up can present new challenges. How do you maintain the speed, autonomy, and focus of small, cross-functional teams while operating at a larger scale? Enter the Squad/Tribe model, popularized by companies like Spotify. This organizational framework has gained traction in modern engineering organizations for its ability to balance autonomy with alignment across large teams.
In this blog post, we’ll dive deep into what the Squad/Tribe model is, its core principles, how it works, and why it’s become a go-to solution for scaling agile teams.
- What Is the Squad/Tribe Model?
- The Squad/Tribe model is an agile organizational structure designed to support rapid development and innovation across multiple teams working on complex products. It breaks down traditional hierarchical structures and fosters a network of autonomous, cross-functional teams—called squads—that operate more like small startups within the company. These squads are grouped into tribes, which focus on specific business areas or product lines.
- At its core, the Squad/Tribe model is about autonomy, alignment, and accountability. Squads have the freedom to make decisions, but tribes ensure that teams are aligned with the broader goals of the organization.
- Key Components of the Squad/Tribe Model
- Squads: Small, cross-functional teams (usually 6–12 people) that work independently on a specific aspect of a product. Each squad is designed to be autonomous, with the ability to ship features or product changes without external dependencies. Squads own the entire lifecycle of their product or feature, from ideation to deployment and maintenance.
- Mission: Each squad has a clear mission and goal, often tied to a particular feature or area of the product.
- Roles: Squads typically include product owners, engineers, designers, and any other roles needed to deliver a fully functional product.
- Autonomy: Squads can choose their tools, methodologies, and development processes, giving them the freedom to innovate.
- Tribes: A collection of squads that work on related areas of the product or business. Tribes are designed to prevent silos from forming and ensure that squads working on similar areas are aligned with one another.
- Size: Tribes usually consist of 40–150 people and are often organized around a common product or business goal.
- Tribe Lead: A leadership role exists within the tribe to ensure that squads are aligned with the overall vision and strategy. Tribe leads help resolve cross-squad issues, provide high-level strategic guidance, and act as a communication link to higher management.
- Chapters: While squads are autonomous, some roles, such as engineers, need to maintain consistency across the organization. This is where chapters come in. Chapters are functional groups within a tribe (e.g., all frontend developers across different squads) that ensure alignment on practices, tools, and standards.
- Chapter Lead: A chapter lead is responsible for guiding their discipline (e.g., engineering) within the tribe, ensuring best practices are followed, and fostering knowledge sharing between squads.
- Guilds: Unlike chapters, which are specific to a tribe, guilds are informal, cross-tribe communities of interest that cut across the entire organization. For example, there might be a guild for frontend development, DevOps, or user experience design. Guilds allow for knowledge sharing, community building, and collaboration across squads and tribes.
- Voluntary Participation: Employees can join guilds based on their interests or expertise, which helps to foster innovation and continuous learning across the organization.
- Alliance: For very large organizations, multiple tribes might be grouped into an alliance to provide even greater alignment at the business level, especially when working on products with many interdependencies.
- How the Squad/Tribe Model Works in Practice
- Autonomy and Speed
- Squads are empowered to make decisions and ship features quickly, without needing to wait for approvals or resources from other parts of the organization. This autonomy accelerates development cycles and allows teams to pivot or iterate rapidly.
- For example, a squad working on a new recommendation engine feature for a music streaming service can decide on its technology stack, choose its methodology (e.g., Scrum, Kanban, or even a hybrid), and deliver the feature directly to production once it’s ready.
- Cross-Functional Teams
- Each squad is self-sufficient, meaning it contains all the skills needed to take a feature from conception to release. This typically includes product managers, backend/frontend engineers, designers, and sometimes even marketers or customer success roles, depending on the product.
By having all these functions in one team, communication bottlenecks are reduced, and dependencies on external teams are minimized.
- Each squad is self-sufficient, meaning it contains all the skills needed to take a feature from conception to release. This typically includes product managers, backend/frontend engineers, designers, and sometimes even marketers or customer success roles, depending on the product.
- Alignment Through Tribes and Chapters
- While squads are autonomous, there still needs to be alignment across teams, especially when working on a unified product. Tribes ensure that squads working in the same product area (e.g., payment services, user authentication) are aligned with the overall company vision and don’t duplicate efforts.
Chapters, meanwhile, help standardize engineering practices, toolsets, and coding standards across squads. This keeps things consistent across the board without stifling innovation.
- While squads are autonomous, there still needs to be alignment across teams, especially when working on a unified product. Tribes ensure that squads working in the same product area (e.g., payment services, user authentication) are aligned with the overall company vision and don’t duplicate efforts.
- Fostering Innovation Through Guilds
- Guilds help the organization stay innovative by facilitating knowledge sharing and collaboration across squads and tribes. For example, an organization might have a DevOps Guild where engineers from various squads share best practices, tools, and new techniques, ensuring continuous improvement without dictating a top-down approach.
- Autonomy and Speed
- Benefits of the Squad/Tribe Model
- Speed and Autonomy: Squads can iterate quickly and push features to market without the delays caused by hierarchical decision-making processes. This autonomy helps foster innovation and allows teams to respond to customer feedback faster.
- Cross-Functional Collaboration: Each squad contains all the skills necessary to deliver a feature or product independently, minimizing cross-team dependencies and improving collaboration across disciplines.
- Scalability: The model is designed to scale, meaning new squads and tribes can be created as the company grows without the organization becoming overly complex or bureaucratic.
- Employee Empowerment: The model empowers employees by giving them ownership over their work, encouraging creativity and innovation. Squads have the freedom to choose their tools, methodologies, and practices, which fosters a strong sense of ownership.
- Alignment with Autonomy: By grouping squads into tribes, organizations ensure that even as teams work autonomously, they are still aligned with the broader company goals.
- Challenges of the Squad/Tribe Model
- While the Squad/Tribe model offers many benefits, it’s not without its challenges:
- Coordination Complexity: As the organization scales, coordinating between squads and tribes can become complex. Without careful attention, silos can still form, and alignment may suffer.
- Leadership and Management: The model requires a different kind of leadership. Tribe leads, chapter leads, and product owners need to be strong communicators and facilitators, often working across teams to resolve conflicts and maintain alignment without relying on traditional authority.
- Autonomy vs. Consistency: While autonomy is a strength, it can also lead to inconsistencies across squads if not managed properly. Chapters help mitigate this risk, but there still needs to be some level of standardization without stifling innovation.
- While the Squad/Tribe model offers many benefits, it’s not without its challenges:
Wrap up…
The Squad/Tribe model is an effective way to scale agile practices in a growing engineering organization. By balancing autonomy and alignment, it enables teams to innovate quickly while still maintaining coherence across the broader organization. The model encourages cross-functional collaboration, reduces dependencies, and fosters a culture of ownership and empowerment.
However, like any model, it requires the right mindset, leadership, and culture to succeed. With proper alignment mechanisms and a focus on continuous learning through guilds and chapters, the Squad/Tribe model can help your organization achieve both speed and scale.
