Squads, chapters, guilds
We are the IT team for a fairly large company. At the moment, we have an infrastructure team, support team and development team.
We are looking at forming squads that are co-located cross functional teams. These squads will be formed of infra people, devs, admins, and so on, essentially a true cross functional team.
And then a chapter would be formed that spans all squads that is made up of specfic knowlege, eg DBA's.
At the moment, we have a Database Lead, Windows Lead and so on. Is the purpose that they become Chapter Leads?
Why are you forming in this way? What do the development teams think of this? And what woud be the benifit for the development teams if there people become chapter leads or not?
What is the problem that you are trying to solve and what other possible options do you have?
He is doing the spotify method. Works for spotify but not always for everyone else.
My organisation did this transformation a while ago, and it seems to work well, especially with knowledge sharing across teams.
The answer is; it depends on the organisation... so in my organisation, the test manager, principal developer and head of delivery all became chapter leads. If you dont have those positions, then leads would be the most best thing... the comes the question of how they get time to put things together for the chapter meetings.
Again, my organisation recognizes "10% time", so we forecast sprints for 9 out of 10 days work, and if the team finishes in 9 days (their forecast wasn't off), then they get to use the day towards chapters or self development.
At the moment, we have a Database Lead, Windows Lead and so on. Is the purpose that they become Chapter Leads?
Servant leadership ought to be applicable throughout an organization. Do you consider a "chapter" to be in need of a different type of leader?
You have to understand what Spotify did. Google and Netflix did this as well.
You can do a search and see how they operate. It is not pure Scrum which many Scrum Masters and Scrum Coaches do not take the time to study.
"At the moment, we have a Database Lead, Windows Lead and so on. Is the purpose that they become Chapter Leads?" The answer is yes in my opinion.
The other thing that you are describing in SAFE they could be considered as enablers.