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Organizational design principles

Design effective organizational structures for engineering teams

Learn and apply organizational design principles to create team structures that optimize for communication, autonomy, and delivery.

90 minutes
creation

Overview

Learn and apply organizational design principles to create team structures that optimize for communication, autonomy, and delivery.

Learning objectives

  • Understand Conway's Law
  • Apply team topologies patterns
  • Design communication structures
  • Optimize for cognitive load

Instructions

Design { organizational }structure:

1. Analyze current organization 2. Identify pain points and inefficiencies 3. Apply design principles 4. Create new structure proposal 5. Plan transition approach

Steps

1

Current state analysis

25 minutes

Map existing organization

2

Problem identification

20 minutes

Find structural issues

3

Design application

25 minutes

Apply team topologies

4

Proposal creation

15 minutes

Design new structure

5

Transition planning

5 minutes

Plan implementation

Pro tips

  • Optimize for fast flow
  • Minimize cognitive load
  • Clear team boundaries
  • Enable team autonomy

Example outcome

New organizational design with stream-aligned teams, enabling teams, and platform teams reducing dependencies by 60%.

Explore more resources

Check out the full stdlib collection for more frameworks, templates, and guides to accelerate your technical leadership journey.