Splitting Ecosystem Teams
Splitting Ecosystem Teams involves dividing a larger ecosystem team into smaller, more focused groups that are responsible for specific geographies, platforms, customers, or market segments. This practice helps to enhance focus, scalability, and efficiency by creating autonomous teams that can work independently to continue to grow and develop their ecosystems.
Goal
The goal of splitting ecosystem teams is to avoid overburdening a team, which will lead to slower development and lower quality. The aim is to enhance scalability, focus, and efficiency by creating smaller, autonomous teams that can independently develop, manage, and scale different ecosystems.
Context
As Products grow Product Teams can split into smaller hierarchies of products. This can increase the number of products that an Ecosystem Team needs to manage as well as increase the overhead on Internal and Enabling teams which also will need to scale. The good news is that the Ecosystem Team structure is designed to be fractal and can also create hierarchies similar to Product Teams.
Splitting Options
| Option | Description |
|---|---|
| Geographic Split | Dividing teams based on geographic regions or markets, allowing for localised product development and support. |
| Platform-Based Split | Splitting teams based on product features or modules, enabling specialisation and focus on specific functionalities. |
| Customer Split | Organising teams around different customers or user segments, tailoring products to specific needs and preferences. |
| Market Segment Split | Dividing teams based on market segments or industries, optimising product offerings for different target audiences. |
Inputs
| Artifact | Description |
|---|---|
| Ecosystem Strategy | The high-level strategic goals and objectives of the ecosystem, including where to play and how to win. |
Outputs
| Artifact | Description | Benefits |
|---|---|---|
| New Ecosystem | The creation of new ecosystem teams, each responsible for a specific geography, platform, customer, or market segment. | Improves focus, agility, and collaboration. |
Anti-patterns
- Split not aligned with strategy: Dividing teams without considering the ecosystem strategy, leading to misalignment and inefficiencies.
- Overlapping responsibilities: Splitting teams in a way that creates overlapping or unclear responsibilities, causing confusion and duplication of effort.