# 🙌 Squads @ Attest

# Squads and engineers

There are many different ways to organise teams and engineers, at Attest we want to set ourselves up in the best possible way for the future. Getting it right, for us, is crucial not only for the growth and scalability of our teams but also for the success of the company.

We're organised in a way where you can choose between two different tracks or roles to progress in.

Engineer. This is the default track that most Engineers will feel at home in. Those who progress along the Engineering track will typically be expert coders, they understand deeply the business context and problem space they're working in and may have a seat across more than one squad. They make significant contributions directly to our goals or drive chapter work that improves our ability to deliver. They possess and build on a deep level of technical capability and domain knowledge, whilst being accountable for upskilling others and distributing knowledge across the whole engineering team and wider company.

Engineering Managers own and lead on all aspects of people management for engineers in a squad, as well as setting technical direction and engineering guardrails. Engineering Managers are also a driver of consistent high-quality, robust, and mission-driven engineering delivery.

# Squads

pizza

"If you can't feed a team with two pizzas, it's too large" - Jeff Bezos

We work in small, cross-functional squads and move quickly as a company.

Product Managers, Designers, Engineering Managers, Frontend & Backend Engineers and Data Scientists work together in small squads. Focussed on a mission, each squad operates with full autonomy to define and work towards their own goals.

Each squad will look slightly different, due to the nature of their mission, but as a rough format to follow our squads will look like this:

  • Engineering Manager
  • 3-5 Engineers
  • Product Manager
  • Designer
  • Data Scientist

Squad members will be balanced so there is an effective mix of different experience levels, and are not overweight on either end of the scale. Squads work the best when they're set up to provide excellent mentoring, coaching, and support to all levels.

# Chapters

chapters in squad model

As we move into truly cross-functional squads it's important that we don't lose the level of communication and collaboration that we've had previously, especially within your discipline or those you share a codebase with for example.

Chapters are a group of team members working within a special area, for example within Backend Engineering, Frontend Engineering, or Engineering Management, a way to promote team collaboration and innovation.

These groups get together on a regular basis to exchange ideas, get help on challenges, and discuss new technologies/methodologies.

# Group

Some of our squads have a common mission and share goals. We call these sets of squads Groups.

# Taskforces

Not all problems we need to solve fit neatly within the strategic direction of our squads or groups. Nor is it always obvious or easy to work out what the solutions are to these problems. Where do critical security improvements fit? How do we work out and resolve our most impactful tech debt artifacts?

This isn't as hard when your whole team can fit within a single room, where you can collaboratively whiteboard a solution and decide on what to work on next week. This becomes exponentially harder with scale and this is why we introduced the concept of taskforces.

A taskforce is a temporary grouping of engineers, who may be from multiple different squads, with a common goal of solving a specific and impactful piece of work. This work probably doesn't fit within an existing squad's goals, is often timeboxed, and usually isn't worked on by more than 4 engineers. Taskforce members do not leave their existing squads but will manage expectations with them regarding the temporary commitment to the workforce.