Striking the Balance: Standardization vs. Flexibility in Managing Multiple Squads

For a product team that having multiple squads, or an organization that have many teams, they often face the challenge of finding the right balance between standardization and flexibility. Each approach carries its own set of pros and cons, influencing team efficiency, communication, and adaptability. Comparing the tradeoffs of different approach and finding the optimal balance between standardization and flexibility is an art. It is also a case by case decision.

Standardization gives consistency. It makes it efficient for decision making. Team don’t have to spend a lot of time either research on their own or debate on which process or technology to take. It also makes it either to move people around different teams and squads as they follow some standardization and team members moving to a new team can easily find similarity in things.

However, over standardize could result in rigidity and hinder team’s ability to find their own solutions and curb their creativity and innovative thinkings.

Giving flexibilities to teams on choosing their processes and technologies empowers the teams to make their own judgement based on their team’s specific needs and preferences. It fosters team’s ability to decide and adapt rapidly to changing requirements and priorities.

But as a result, it makes each team different from the others. This is supposed to be a good thing. But there may lack consistency among teams. And each new member of a team even though from the same organization also go through a learning curve to adapt to the new team.

There is no one perfect answer for what should be standardized and what should be decided by each individual team. It is probably a constant adjustment. But having a culture of empowering the team, encouraging sharing information among teams, and have an easy feedback loop and safe environment for team members to speak up, it will help to get to the optimal point on this.