Independence, Autonomy, and Too Many Small Teams

The absolutely incorrect way to scale your engineering team

This article was originally published on my website — https://kislayverma.com/organizations/independence-autonomy-and-too-many-small-teams/

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“The two pizza team” paradigm has become really popular in the context of organizing software teams. The idea is to have small, self-reliant teams working independently to solve problems. The “two-pizza” refers to the guidance to keep the team small enough that we need not order more than two pizzas to feed them.

These teams are all around us today, but we are not seeing the kind of productivity or shipping velocity that we expected to see. Most developers, especially in larger organizations, complain about meetings, the burden of communication, the slow pace of change etc. Startups often sell themselves to potential candidates by touting their agility. But why should larger companies be slow if everyone is using the same “empowered team”/”autonomous team” model for organizing themselves?

I argue that we have lost the original intent of the “two pizza teams” (aka autonomous teams). The way we are organizing and…