The Vasa (see Figure 1) is one of the biggest architectural failures of all time. The Vasa was designed to be the most powerful armed vessel in the world - two full gun decks with 72 bronze cannons. Surprisingly, in 1628 this massive vessel sank only 1,400 yards into its maiden voyage because it was too top heavy. The Vasa was built for scale and power but had no agility. Structures built for scale or speed require different architectural strategies. Agile teams also require different team structures to achieve either scale or performance. Let's discuss the differences.
Scaling Agile
A Team of Teams strategy (see Figure 2) is an ideal structure for scaling agile. Refer to my 2-part series on Team of Teams to learn more about the key ingredients for scaling agile and several strategies we can implement to build more scalable agile teams.
High-Performance Agile
Do you see any short-term limitations that will reduce performance in the Team of Teams diagram? It's the lines that represent communication. For example, would that diagram be easy to maintain if it was a dependency diagram? No, the overall coupling would be very high. That diagram violates the Law of Demeter and as a result becomes less efficient and more difficult to maintain. Am I saying a Team of Teams strategy is wrong? Not at all, the benefits out weight the disadvantages. However, if your organization has a business driver to complete a short-term project in record time our team structures must adapt to gain maximum team performance.
When speed becomes the #1 business driver for a short-term project a decoupled team structure (See Figure 3) promotes less distractions, more dedicated focus time, and higher quality. Furthermore, the team size is actually scaled down to reduce communication dependencies. To achieve more performance with fewer resources teams often employ higher skilled resources that are capable of handling multiple roles within the team.
