Squad Structuring in Lean and Agile Manufacturing: A Guide for High Performance Teams

Lean and agile methodologies have become an important tool for companies to maintain their existence and be competitive in today's complex and variable business environment. The basis of these methodologies are modern organizational structures and goals such as teamwork, flexibility, continuous improvement culture and squad structuring. In this article, I will examine the importance of squads, their creation, obstacles to performance, and some examples of good squad practices.

What is Squad? What are their Duties and Responsibilities?

A squad is a self-managed team that focuses on a specific service or product, has cross-functional skills, and works together to achieve a common goal. Squads typically consist of 5 to 11 people and have their own leaders, planning and delivery people and roles.

In the Squad structure, the team is responsible for the entire life cycle of the product or service. The team, which is responsible for the entire process from the idea to the emergence of the physical product and subsequent support, also manages its own planning and delivery processes with agile methods such as Scrum or Kanban in order to manage this long process.

Continuous improvement and kaizen culture are indispensable for squads. Continuous improvement of the product or service and customer feedback focus are important inputs for this journey. In addition, not compromising on quality and following high quality standards are among the important responsibilities of the squads.

Rotating the PDCA cycle within agile methods is among the most critical responsibilities of the squad structure, which is responsible for all these processes, in terms of ensuring quality, high standards and customer satisfaction.

So, what should a good squad structure be like?

In order for the Squad structure to be useful and meet expectations, it is important to meet some necessary conditions. When we look at these;

1.Right Size: It is important that squads generally consist of 5 to 11 people so that team members can communicate effectively with each other and collaborate by learning from each other.

2. Cross-Functional Skills: It is critical for the desired output that Squad members have all the necessary skills to develop and deliver the service or product. A missing role and skill can hinder the success of the entire process.

3.Clear Goals and Responsibilities: Since the Squad is a self-managed structure, everyone in the team should contribute to determining the goal and clearly know their own responsibilities to achieve this goal.

4. Regular Communication and Cooperation: Squad members should continue their business processes and keep communication among themselves at the highest level through daily diaries, sprint processes and retrospectives.

5. Continuous Improvement and Kaizen Culture: Squads must always raise their standards, make the product or service competitive and be preferred by the customer. The main way to achieve this is to act with the philosophy of always achieving better by not being satisfied with the current one and to follow the kaizen culture.

6. Customer Focus: Squads work to meet customer needs and ensure customer satisfaction. This includes responding quickly to customer feedback and developing new product and service ideas. It is important for success that squads come together with this awareness.

Common Problems Encountered in Squad Structures

Although the squad structure is a modern organizational structure that provides many advantages to companies with a healthy structure, many difficulties may be experienced in practice.

Lack of healthy cooperation and communication between different squads may prevent squads from achieving their intended results. Lack of information and coordination can also negatively affect teams' morale and motivation levels.

Responsibilities and goal ambiguities can also cause a decrease in the sense of belonging of people in squads, which can be a major obstacle to achieving goals. Exactly what each squad and its members want to achieve and what are expected from them in this path should be clearly determined by the squad itself.

Resistance to change is also an important problem that can be encountered in every company. As a result, Squad structuring brings a different perspective to traditional organizational structures. Especially the different perspective on the hierarchical structure and the fact that authorization is done within the squad itself may cause some employees to approach the squad structure with resistance. Overcoming this situation through effective and open communication and making the results of the progress that this culture will create publicly known is of great importance for the health of the squad structure.

Some Examples from Working Life and Conclusion

There are many companies that realize the benefits of the Squad structure and use this organizational model. Spotify comes first among these. By using squads in its product development processes, Spotify ensures customer satisfaction and high quality standards by ensuring that each squad focuses on a specific product or product function. In addition, since it attaches great importance to the healthy functioning of the squads, it also uses a platform that allows members to constantly communicate with each other and share information. As we mentioned above, spotify, which knows the importance of a common goal for squads and uses project management tools to work on this goal and monitor the process, is among the companies shown as examples in squad structuring.

In addition, Netflix, which uses squads in its content development processes, and Toyota, which uses squad structuring in its facilities in its production processes, are other examples that can be given in this context.

As a result, customer-oriented and high-quality delivery of products and services in an environment of increasing uncertainty and competition has become indispensable for success. Companies that can achieve this through employee satisfaction and effort optimization will be more competitive. For this reason, squads are waiting for their users as important tools.