An executive once told me that organization change is a last resort. It is done after you have run out of all other options. Recently I’ve noticed multiple squads reporting to me have become stale. This is a known problem and Agile Alliance has a good article on Dynamic Reteaming as a solution.

The easiest answer is to flatten the squads into one and move people around dynamically. However we need to remember why we created the squads in the first place. It was to give them focus. Now this still can be accomplished but more nuanced.

I recently read Reset by Dan Heath where he discussed the concept of a “Genius Swap.” You ask each member of your team what they love to work on. Then inquire what tasks they would prefer to pay others to accomplish. This week I tried that with my team. It was surprising to see how much overlap existed. People wanted to do less of certain tasks while others wanted to do more of the same tasks. I now have guidance from my team how to reallocate roles and responsibilities.

I plan to do this regularly to dynamically change our squads using a bottom up methodology.