Autonomous Team Structure
In early web development, teams were organized by discipline. The front-end department developed the visual interaction for websites, the back-end department worked on the system logic of input received from the user, and the database department managed data across user sessions.
Teams partitioned by discipline face multiple handoffs and extensive inter-team communication to deliver customer-facing features. This approach drastically reduces the velocity of releases and potentially introduces internal friction and an "us-vs-them" blame culture across teams.
The natural inertia within monodisciplinary teams directs our team toward misguided goals. A team consisting entirely of backend engineers will focus on building the best back-end system they can envision. While this might be an attractive and self-rewarding task for engineers, our organization requires our teams to focus on the best possible customer experience.
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