Lingering questions
In this handbook, there is a broad range of information to help engineering managers do their best work, but there are a few topics not covered in previous chapters. Along with team design questions, you may have a few more lingering questions, which will be addressed here.
What are squads, chapters, guilds, and tribes?
If you have heard these terms used in the context of team design, you might have heard them in reference to the Spotify model. In the early 2010s, Spotify wrote extensively about its team design approach and popularized a structure consisting of a product aligned organization with formalized communities of practice, as shown in Figure 16.5:
Figure 16.5: The original Spotify model of team design
In the Spotify model, a squad is a cross-functional team working together on a specific product area. A chapter is a small community of practice with a narrow area of focus. A guild is a large community of practice that...
