Recently, many Engineering teams have had to make more do with fewer folks to tackle the responsibilities a larger team had inherited over time. This has caused organizations to scramble to find ways to fund feature development, handle maintenance burdens and acclimate to a new normal across smaller teams.
But what if the answer lies in rethinking team structures and mandates and adopting a wholly different team model than what the organization has had in the past? How can we best show up and support the needs of our teams, while also proposing ways to “scale” teams nimbly and keeping organizational changes in perspective?
In this talk, I will share my experience of working on an astonishingly small team on some of the highest-stake problems anyone could throw a computer at and how that inspired a plan to create a new, flexible-model team at Slack to continuously, and creatively deliver top priorities.
I’ll also highlight the can’t-miss key points of culture-building in a tumultuous time, examine the challenges faced in adjusting to this new way of working, and go over what it means to make a flexible-model team sustainable in the long run. Learn how flexibility begets resilience, how to mitigate risks to morale and business goals and how to recognize when the time might be right for your organization to undertake a similar pivot in the near future.