In today’s world of software development, scaling a team while maintaining quality, collaboration, and agility can be a daunting task. However, by building a well-thought-out structure and continuously adapting it, we’ve successfully scaled our engineering practices. While we leverage agile methodologies, we’ve also tailored them to our unique needs, ensuring we’re not just scaling agile, but scaling software engineering in a way that fits our organization’s vision.
Our Agile-Driven Structure
At the core of our scaling strategy is a combination of agile practices and a structure that ensures both autonomy and alignment. We use the Spotify model with modifications to make it work for our context. Our teams consist of developers, product owners, scrum masters, managers, and principle engineers, all aligned with the squad’s goals.
Managers play a critical role in coordinating and supporting their teams, addressing both technical and interpersonal needs. Meanwhile, principle engineers guide teams on best practices related to architecture and work estimation. The agile teams are responsible for planning and executing work at a regular cadence to consistently deliver results.
The structure is designed to be flexible yet efficient. Squads typically consist of eight members: six developers, one product owner, and one scrum master. We balance feature development with maintenance to manage tech debt while keeping pace with new features. Each squad focuses on delivering value regularly, ensuring a steady pace while avoiding burnout.
Proactive Problem-Solving and Continuous Collaboration
Scaling is not just about executing tasks; it’s about proactively solving problems, collaborating during development, and ensuring alignment before releasing software. This structure empowers us to anticipate challenges and proactively address them, ensuring that we’re not merely reacting to issues as they arise.
With clear guidelines and regular touch points, we maintain a culture of trust but verify, where code undergoes thorough peer reviews and checks before being released. This practice helps us bake quality into the development process. We also adopt shift-left practices, using GitFlow branching to enforce standards like lints, unit tests, and security checks.
Fostering a People Centric Culture
Behind every technical achievement is a team member contributing their best. To support our people, leadership works closely with individual contributors to align their personal aspirations with organizational goals. Our org actively invest in learning and development by offering both time and budget for courses that require time off, and we regularly assess team morale through pulse checks.
This approach allows us to scale not just software engineering, but also personal growth. Every team member has the opportunity to improve their skills and feel supported in their development journey.
Building a Culture of Quality and Continuous Improvement
While we’ve built a robust structure that supports scaling, it’s crucial to acknowledge that mistakes are inevitable—often due to human error rather than flaws in the process. Even the best systems can’t completely eliminate mistakes, especially in a fast-paced environment.
What we’ve learned is that strong processes and a supportive culture significantly reduce errors and increase our chances of success. Yet, we also understand that no system is perfect. By continuously improving both process and culture, we can minimize errors and learn from them when they occur. Leadership fosters an environment where mistakes are seen as opportunities to learn and evolve, which allows us to adapt more effectively.
Quality at Every Step
Ensuring software quality isn’t just about testing late in the development cycle; it’s integrated throughout. Our teams are empowered with a comprehensive testing framework, including unit tests, API automation, end-to-end automation, and manual testing. We’re experimenting with the test automation pyramid to ensure the right balance of testing at each layer.
Documentation is key to team alignment. We use ADRs, epics, user stories, high-level designs, and README files to ensure everyone is on the same page. As part of our continuous improvement efforts, we’re moving toward a monorepo setup from a multi-repo configuration to improve transparency, ease of maintenance, and documentation accessibility. This shift enhances visibility and collaboration across teams, fostering a more cohesive engineering culture.
Leadership and Scaling
As we continue to grow, the role of leadership becomes increasingly critical. Our leadership group operates its own sprint, staying aligned with the teams while proactively addressing challenges, shifting requirements, and team needs. Leadership is deeply engaged in discussions about infrastructure, talent management, and risk mitigation. This collaborative and transparent approach helps us manage scale effectively while prioritizing the team’s well-being.
The leadership group works closely with the teams, using tools like SWOT analysis and the skill-will matrix to evaluate talent gaps, proactively address risks, and identify opportunities for growth.
Overcoming Challenges and Growing Together
While we’ve faced challenges in scaling—such as balancing feature development with managing technical debt or ensuring cross-team collaboration—each obstacle has been an opportunity to refine our processes. For example, we initially found that teams were spending too much time on new feature development, leading to a growing backlog of tech debt. We adjusted by implementing a more deliberate prioritization strategy, ensuring that both new features and debt management were given the attention they deserved.
As we continue to grow, we must remain agile—not only in our development processes but also in how we adapt our organizational culture. The ability to learn from mistakes and continuously improve is key.
Conclusion: A Journey of Scaling and Evolving
Ultimately, our journey of scaling software engineering is one of continuous evolution. We are not static in our approach; we strive to adapt and improve with each iteration. By leveraging agile principles, investing in our people, and maintaining a flexible yet structured process, we’ve built a scalable and adaptable engineering organization.
Our structure allows us to grow while ensuring that quality, collaboration, and support are always at the forefront. And while we face challenges along the way, we continue to learn and improve—proving that with the right balance of process, culture, and leadership, scaling engineering success is not only possible but sustainable.
As you embark on your own scaling journey, remember that success lies in continuous evolution—embracing change, learning from mistakes, and investing in both your people and your processes.
Quiet Reflections 