How to structure your software development team

Just like in sports, successfully leading a software development team takes strategy.

You’re recruiting top talent, calling the shots, and coaching the team through them. But one strategic piece that often gets missed is team structure. Even with the best players out there, your team can’t win if they can’t agree on who’s playing what position.

Having a clearly defined team structure helps leaders build accountability and ownership, so that teams can build faster, scale better, and launch winning, quality products.

So what does a winning development team structure actually look like? And how can you set your team up for success?

6 ways to structure a software development team

Let’s start by exploring the most common team structures. It’s important to note—these approaches aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive. For instance, you might have a triad leadership structure but have specialist and generalist engineers within the team.

Then, in the sections below, we’ll talk about how to choose which is right for your team.

1. The triad structure (Or some form of it)

These days, most software development teams follow some take on the “triad structure” — which unites three core competencies: design, eng, and product.

• Engineering: Responsible for building, shipping, and ensuring the product is reliable
• Design: Responsible for the user experience
• Product: Responsible for defining the problem, determining priorities, and measurement

2. The generalist structure

Generalist development teams include folks with broad skills and experience, who can handle the end-to-end development of a feature or product.

Each team member is responsible for implementing features as a whole, which means fewer blockers and dependencies, but sometimes slower launch times as teammates work on tasks that may be completely new to them.

This is a common approach for smaller companies, brand new features, or on teams looking to invest in their talent, upleveling with new skills and competencies on each project.

3. The specialist structure

On a specialist team, each team member is an expert in a certain programming language, technology, or framework, and is therefore responsible for that part of development.

Depending on the scope of the work, you may have multiple specialists and hierarchy in each area of expertise.

This approach can sometimes provide faster development, since many pieces can be completed simultaneously, but can lead to waterfall-like practices which create gaps in communication when different specialists don’t speak each other’s lingo.

There’s also a high level of dependency on certain folks to get things done, and more coordination required.

4. The hybrid structure

This approach is a mix of the two above—with some team members being generalists who can focus on the product as a whole, and others being subject matter experts in one specific area.

This flexible team structure helps maximize efficiency, but can be most costly and time-consuming to build.

5. The business unit structure

Many larger companies chose to structure their product development teams around their key business units or initiatives. Under this approach, teams typically operate as their own unit within the company, with the triad of product, design, and engineering.

6. The matrix model (aka the Spotify model)

Made popular by Spotify, the matrix structure is similar to the business unit structure, except in the role that team leads and managers play.

On matrix teams, managers are in charge of people management only—not product leadership. Product teams (often called tribes) set goals and pursue them on their own, with leaders serving a distinct coaching role external to the team. This requires strong communication to work effectively.

Let your strategy and staffing inform your software team structure

When it comes to choosing which structure your team will follow, it’s never one size fits all. What works best for some teams might not be the right fit for others.

To land on your most effective structure, experts recommend starting with a list of top business or org outcomes. Once you align on what’s most important, it can become a lot easier to see how to organize a team in order to achieve that.

Some example business outcomes:

• Increase speed to market
• Decrease cost
• Minimize team and code dependency
• Speed up decision-making

For instance: If your top priority is minimizing dependencies, a generalist structure where each engineer handles end-to-end development might be your best option.

Looking at your team’s current makeup and interests can also be an effective way to staff certain projects.

How to determine the right structure for each project

Another layer of complexity when it comes to structuring your team, is that not every project will be (or should be) staffed the same.

When kicking off a new project, consider the following to help determine your structure.

• Project complexity: Is your project fairly standard or does it require deep domain or niche expertise? Something straightforward like an ecommerce platform might not require specialists, whereas something like an NFT trading marketplace likely will.
• Collaboration abilities: How well can folks collaborate and communicate with one another? If you’re taking the specialist approach, but different teammates are constantly struggling to communicate with each other due to project complexity, you might consider staffing a project manager to help with coordination.
• Deadlines: Do you have a tight deadline? You’ll want a robust team with more senior engineers, specialists, and a product manager to keep everything on track efficiently. For less urgent priorities, a lean, generalist team might be your best bet.
• Budget: Do you have any headcount for the project? Your team budget will always be a factor when it comes to seniority or number of specialists on a given initiative.

Team structure considerations for remote and hybrid teams

As more teams move to remote and hybrid ways of working, eng leaders have new considerations to take into account when it comes to team structure.

There are workarounds to help make remote development more effective though.

For instance: On fully remote teams, limiting the location of teammates to 1-2 time zones is starting to become more of a norm.

For hybrid teams, having some teams that are all in-office and some that are fully remote is becoming a common path too.

Typical roles on a software development team

Now that you’ve got a few different models for team structure and staffing in mind, let’s review the typical roles and responsibilities within a software development team. Here are your key players.

Product owner

The product owner deeply understands (and is responsible for) the project at hand. They’re familiar with requirements, limitations, user needs, and trends that might shape the work, and typically own the vision for what the final output should look like.

Engineering manager

The eng manager oversees the engineering team’s work, and is responsible for project planning, scoping, implementation, and tracking progress throughout the development cycle. While they don’t usually code themselves, they’re typically experienced developers who can help the team troubleshoot different routes when issues arise.

Developer

These are the people responsible for actually coding the software. Front-end developers work on the visible elements and back-end developers handle the functionality of your product.

Designer

Your designers are responsible for how users experience and interact with your product. UI designers are responsible for the user interface—your product’s look and feel. UX designers focus on how user’s will interact with it, suggesting improvements to the experience that make your product easier to use. Design typically includes visual and interactive elements, as well as the words and content within the experience.

Software architect

This is the teammate responsible for defining the complete architecture system of a project. They describe technical and functional aspects of the software and work with developers to build its components throughout the development cycle. They’re part leader, part programming expert.

QA engineer

Your QA (quality assurance) engineer makes sure products launch with a high bar for quality. Their role is about more than just bashing bugs, it’s more holistic—they work to understand the processes used to develop the software and suggest improvements that’ll bring higher quality and functionality to the final product.

Business analyst

In software development, the business analyst helps clarify the business need, analyzes the data behind it, and translates it into clear technical requirements for the development team to tackle.

What’s the ideal software development team size?

Your team’s size has a direct impact on its productivity and effectiveness. For software development teams, experienced leaders say groups of 5-9 tend to be most effective. Once you grow larger than that, things like standups and updates tend to feel less relevant to the entire group and it’s probably a good idea to split into concrete sub-team groups.

For manager/direct report ratios, most leaders agree that seven is the magic number. Though this might vary depending on factors like team location, seniority, and other manager responsibilities.

Reevaluate, adapt, iterate

How you organize your team will provide direction and structure, but it’s never set in stone.

As your org grows or priorities shift, you’ll want to reevaluate what approach is most effective and empowering for your teammates. Just as you evaluate your processes and goals on a regular basis, consider building a quarterly or annual cadence around reevaluating teams, sub-teams, and workstreams.

Are they still serving their intended purpose? Or would another approach be more impactful?