Bhavini Soneji - VP of Engineering at Headspace Bhavini Soneji will be looking at how we make our organisation structure nimble to align with the product and business strategy. She'll be asking whether there is a right/wrong structure, when to change up your team structure and how to hire and empower smart people who will problem-solve autonomously.

1. Teams &
Organization
Agility
Bhavini Soneji
VP of Eng at Headspace

2. Agenda
● What makes an effective organization?
● Organization Pillars
● Organization Structures : Squads & Chapters

3. What makes an effective organization?

4. 4
What makes an effective organization?
DRIVE RESULTS
(WHAT)
CULTURE
(HOW)
TALENT
(WHO)
CUSTOMER
(WHY)
CUSTOMER obsessed
curiosity
Attract & retain TALENT for
today & tomorrow
CULTURE of ONETEAM trust,
empowerment
Scalable tooling &
technology Innovation

5. Portfolio - Heal
Wellbe Organization
Pillars
Success doesn't just happen, it is planned for.

6. People first Healthy Practices Org alignment & size
● Streamlined communication
● Invest in growing leaders
● SMEs, Mentoring & Coaching
● Motivation & Ownership
● Customer shadow
● Empower (Problem not Solution)
● Hiring right
● Culture of Innovation & Data
driven
● Align org to company strategy
● ONETEAM = PM+Design+Eng+Data
● Sizing guide
● Balanced composition
Organization Principles
These foster people development and guide the organization structure, behaviors, and mindset
6

7. Measuring Success
Business Growth
● Revenue & Expansion
● Margin Improvement
● Operational Efficiency
Employee Engagement
● Employee Happiness
○ Psychological safety
○ Communication & Decision Making
○ Coaching / Feedback
● Promo, Retention rate
● Diversity distribution
Customer Satisfaction
● Customer Feedback
● Delivering value through
releasing frequent iterations
● Fast Detect & Response

8. Measuring Success
QUANTITATIVE:
● Culture Surveys
● NPS
● Biz Metrics
● Operational Metrics
QUALITATIVE:
● Customer interviews
● Sprint Retrospectives
● Roundtables
● 1:1, Skip 1:1

9. When and how often to re-align?
Alignment
● Adapt to shifts : from long multi-year planning to quarterly, from waterfall to agile
● Realign to the needs of next phase : What got you here isn’t necessary what will get you to the next phase.
● Evolve organization & process to address the challenges meet the product evolution.
● Schedule re-align as part of the strategic planning, involving everyone in shaping it
Watch out for
● Ensure domain knowledge is not lost
● “If it works, don't touch it …” Optimize existing working relationships & self-organizing.
● Make “change” part of the culture. Plan for change, making it expected and normal

10. Organization
Structure

11. Product Mirrors Organization
CONWAY LAW: “Your products will mirror your organizational structure. Embrace the fact.”

12. Squads
● Group is Cross-functional & Mix platform
● Accountable for E2E delivery on a business / customer problem
● Meets every day stand-up , sprint planning / retro
● Size : Small to Large
Chapters
● Grouped by similar skills (platform) e.g IOS chapter
● Accountable for consistent patterns & best practices
● Meets every week or every other week
● Knowledge Sharing & Health of code base
Personalization Identity Mgmt

13. Manager Responsibility
- All engineers in the chapter report to same manager (e.g. IOS)
- Chapter duties and initiatives (eg arch)
- Resourcing, prioritization, tech decision
- People growth and Technical mentorship
Model 1: Chapter Managers
Manager 1 (IOS)
Squad 2
Manager 2 (Android) Manager 3 (Web) Manager 4 (API)
Squad 1 Squad 3
Optimizes for
- Changes in squad structures to meet changing business / customer needs
- Chapter disciplines
- Applicable for Smaller to Medium organizations

14. Model 2: Squad Managers
Manager Responsibility
- All engineers in the squad report to same manager
- E2E delivery on a business / customer problem
- Execution: resourcing, prioritization, tech decision
- People growth and Technical mentorship
Manager - Product slice
Squad 1
Manager - Product slice
Squad 3Squad 2
Optimizes for
- Customer & Business - Make it functional vs unit
- Communication Lines - Alignment & streamlined with org structure
- Decision Making - Having autonomy with accountability
- Social Capital - Team alignment driving trust & belonging
- Applicable - For medium to large organizations

15. 15
What makes an effective organization?
DRIVE RESULTS
(WHAT)
CULTURE
(HOW)
TALENT
(WHO)
CUSTOMER
(WHY)
CUSTOMER obsessed
curiosity
Attract & retain TALENT for
today & tomorrow
CULTURE of ONETEAM trust,
empowerment
Scalable tooling &
technology Innovation

16. THANK YOU!!!