Agile methodologies are already a reality in many companies. Especially in an increasingly unstable and unpredictable world, having agile teams that can deliver results is something increasingly demanded by modern organizations.

The coronavirus pandemic, which began in 2020, was the trigger for agility and remote work to become even more evident.

But it takes run away from fads and understand if, in fact, remote squads are the right type of team for your business — after all, this modality requires some care and has specific applications.

So, continue here and discover with us the main information about squads and how you can adopt this agile team format in your company.

What are remote squads

What are remote squads

Squads are multidisciplinary teams whose objective is the success of the project and the business. In literal English translation, squads are “squadrons” and the term is on the rise because it is used in agile methodologies. 

Therefore, remote squads are teams made up of professionals from different areas who do cohesive and integrated work at a distance, that is, without meeting in person.

Too much information at once? Don't worry, we're going to explain each of these concepts step by step.

What is agile methodology

What is agile methodology

Agile methodologies emerged from the need for businesses to respond more quickly to rapid market changes.

O Agile Manifesto, from 2001, is the document that gathered the main practices of this new management format. It contains the principles that support agile software development and that can also be applied to other products and services.

One of the most well-known agile frameworks is Scrum. The framework is composed of 19 processes, 6 principles and 5 main aspects.

Scrum was widely used in startups and companies that needed quick adaptations.

One of them was the giant Spotify. Launched in 2008 in Sweden, the music, podcast and video streaming service was born agile.

But, over the years of application, the company realized that Scrum — with all its rules — had become, in a way, plastered to its needs. 

Thus, Spotify inaugurates its own agile version, more modern and adapted to its demands: Spotify Scaling Agile.

Spotify Scaling Agile

In 2012, the article was published Scaling Agile @ Spotify with Tribes, Squads, Chapters & Guilds by Henrik Kniberg & Anders Ivarsson, then agile coaches on Spotify.

In this new format, agility is more important than methodology, but some concepts remain very similar.

See, below, a simplified comparison of the elements that exist in the methods:

Scrum Framework Spotify Scaling Agile
Scrum Master  Agile Trainer 
Product Owner (PO) Product Owner (PO)
Scrum-Team Squad

So, we can say that the squads proposed by Spotify Scaling Agile are the Scrum Team, from Scrum.

Spotify agile coaches have also defined groupings that can exist around squads. Are they:

  • tribes: several squads working together for a given business unit.
  • Chapters (Chapters): align professionals with the same skills, but who are separated into different squads, such as a Design chapter or a UX chapter. 
  • Guilds: groups independent of the structure that meet to exchange experiences in studies and talks, for example.

How squads work 

How squads work

Squads need to be, first and foremost: multifunctional, autonomous, self-managing and must have the ability to work together to deliver the product.

In addition, squads must be:

  • Stable: with ongoing training, consecutive
  • Cross-functional: Members must have complementary knowledge and skills
  • Small: with quantity that varies between 5 and 9 people
  • Integrated: need to have real physical or virtual integration
  • Dedicated: focused on just one delivery
  • Aligned: all work in sync for result

In this sense, squads can be considered a complete group, which has all the technical capabilities necessary to deliver the desired product. 

For example, in a company that has not adhered to agile methodologies, professionals are usually grouped by area. 

Then there are the marketing, technology, design and other sectors working separately on several projects at the same time.

In organizations adept at agility, people from different fields of knowledge are allocated in lean teams, totally focused on delivery. 

We can say that a squad works as a small group formed by a commander, a sniper, a medic and other soldiers who are going to the same battle together.

types of squads 

types of squads

It should be noted that squads, in order to be effective, need to be multidisciplinary — that is, the team must necessarily be formed by professionals from different and complementary areas.

In this sense, there is no squad with several employees from the same segment as an exclusive squad for marketing, technology or content, for example.

For the project to get off the ground and be implemented according to agile methodologies, it is necessary that different skills are condensed into a single microteam.

Veja this case of PRG Brazil: The consulting firm aimed to improve its digital positioning.

Among the deliverables were the construction of the website and the creation of content to feed the organization's virtual address, blog and LinkedIn. So, different professionals would be needed for the product to be delivered.

For this, we assembled a squad composed of Product Owner, Graphic designer, Editor, Traffic Manager e Developer. Do you see how different areas are?

Together, the team delivered:

Without the cohesion and joint effort of a remote squad trained in different areas of knowledge, this delivery would take much longer and would not have the same integration and alignment as a squad delivery.

And the work of this remote team made the difference for PRG Brasil’s business:

"We were able to get things done very quickly and at a very high quality — which was even higher than I expected. In a short period of time, we had a lot of results.

In less than six months, the vast majority of our business was generated by the actions we took with Crowd.

The coolest thing about this experience that we had — and I think this is the strong point of Crowd's platform concept — is that you have the best professionals at the time you need to do the task you need, but all this with management intelligent."

Fernando Pierry – Founding partner of PRG Brasil

Therefore, when you are thinking about types of agile teams, remember that the main guideline is that the team needs to be multidisciplinary, autonomous and focused.

Examples of remote squads

Examples of remote squads

Many companies already use squads in their compositions. Among them, we can mention Quinto Andar, Magazine Luiza, Sambatech, Mercado Livre, Hostgator and Contabilizei. 

Below you will see more examples of agile team composition in other organizations:

Nubank

The roxinho card startup is one of the Brazilian companies that adopt squads as a team formation.

According to reports Kete Martins Rufino, which was already part of the Nubank team, some squads became so large that they had to be grouped into tribes, such as, for example, Acquisition and NuConta.

In addition, the financial institution formed several chapters, some of which are Engineer, Business Analyst (BA) and Data Science.

In Kete's words, even if there are some setbacks, the method works if the organization uses the structure of squads and people who have incorporated the same values ​​as the company.

Health for Pet

Health for Pet is a company that offers digital health plans for dogs and cats. With the aim of simplifying pet care, the organization had the challenge of digitizing the process of contracting its products.

For this, we set up a squad composed of Product Owner, Tech Lead, UX / UI Designer, Dev Front-End and Dev Back-End for the development of the digital sales platform and the mobile application for the company's customers to have easy access to its services.

The remote team worked on the Health for Pet's digital transformation process, generating results for the business:

“A good part of the systems that make Health for Pet different and that drew Porto Seguro’s attention came from this partnership with Crowd.” 

Fernando Leibel, President of Health for Pet

Quin Street

QuinStreet is an American vertical marketing and online media company. To solidify its image in the Brazilian market, it required a massive production of content for their educational blogs.

For this, we set up a squad composed of Product Owner, Content Assistant, Content Writers and Content Reviewers. Together, they produced more than 2 articles for educational portals focused on Higher Education.

In 2019, QuinStreet's educational blogs had 60 million hits and generated approximately 100 enrollments for higher education institutions. QuinStreet's Brazilian operation was acquired by Quero Educação in early 2020.

Remote squad challenges

Remote squad challenges

Moving from traditional management to agile methodology can be really challenging. It is even common for companies that have not consolidated practices and processes to want to “skip” steps going straight to agility.

It is necessary, first of all, to have clear ideas and understand the purpose of implementing the methods and their elements, such as remote squads.

Enterprises that are interested in agile teams need to be ready for the benefits of the method, but also for the challenges that accompany it.

The decentralization of management and the autonomy of the teams is something that, for traditional organizations, can create difficulties.

Think that in traditional teams - such as finance, marketing, product and others - there is a clear hierarchy.

Junior professionals report to analysts; these respond to plenums who, in turn, respond to seniors, and so on.

The strategic, tactical and operational levels are clearly defined and respected by everyone in the organization.

In Agile, on the other hand, each remote squad is like a “mini company” within the company, with its own responsibilities, goals, deliverables and, of course, a specific team.

Despite working according to the organization's objectives, the squads have the autonomy to define methods, tools and ways to reach the desired result.

Independent, they organize resources — including human resources — in the way they consider to be the most effective way to achieve goals.

Thus, the company thinking of implementing squads as a team modality must be open to working with decentralized and independent teams.

Another challenge of agility is to properly allocate professionals. Because they need to be self-sufficient, remote squads must be made up of all the hands and minds needed to build the product.

Thus, hiring all individuals internally to form an agile team is another point that companies need to evaluate. This is because the traditional hiring process can take a few months to assemble a squad for the company — which ends up impacting the agility of the project. 

An alternative to this is to choose to hire remote squads with companies specializing in this type of team. In a few days, it is possible to have a remote squad the size of your needs with expert professionals to accelerate marketing and technology projects.

Advantages of remote squad

Advantages of Remote Squad

In short, we can say that squads are advantageous for organizations because they:

  • Adapt companies to rapid market changes
  • help to accelerate your digital transformation
  • Allow more agile deliveries and within the necessary standards
  • Prioritize people over processes
  • They bring together qualified and diverse professionals to find the best solutions together
  • They promote integrated work with joint efforts by employees, facilitating innovation
  • In the team, tensions caused by conflict of interests are reduced
  • Generate more transparent and clear work for the entire company

When to choose to hire a remote squad

When to choose to hire a remote squad

As you can see, squads are used in specific organizational scenarios: environments that need to quickly adapt to market transformations — and often revolutions.

Rapid technological advances and changes in behavior and consumer demands have been accelerating organizational processes. 

If your company is going through situations like this, implementing agile methods and using remote squads can be a great solution for managing your business.

We know that, however, the adoption of new practices is not always something simple and fast. Organizational culture can take a long time to change, taking years to be effectively installed.

Therefore, companies that still cannot put agile teams in their entire structure have a very interesting alternative at their disposal: remote squads made up of independent professionals.

By hiring a team that works remotely, your business can form a multidisciplinary, autonomous and highly focused team without having to change its internal layout.

Another advantage of the remote format is that your company does not need to have all professionals hired internally to enjoy the benefits of agility.

Hiring a remote squad allows you to have a great selection of trained and qualified professionals for the deliveries your business needs.

At Crowd, with 19 technology, design, media and content professionals, we have the perfect team for your project. 

So apply now remote squad budget with Crowd.

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gabriel matias

Co Founder and CEO of CROWD.
I connect you to the best tech and marketing professionals with AI, instantly.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/gamatias/

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