The right organizational structure changes with the strategic goals of the company. Many companies that are moving towards more agility and better value creation (lean), are finding it beneficial to organize themselves around value streams. Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) authored by Dean Leffingwell et. al. shows guidance on how to find value streams and organize your product development or IT services around these. What are the different roles participating on value streams? How do they interact with the customer and with other internal teams? The Meddlers Game shown here is a great tool to play organizational situations out - starting with the strategic or customer need - and developing an organizational set-up that serves our wanted outcome best.
The Meddlers Game is part of the Management 3.0 Games developed by Jurgen Appelo, played by organizations around the world and offered on Management 3.0 training courses by trainers like Andrea (Lean Advantage) and Ryan (EPAM) globally.
Now I bet some people may have shifted over time between one role and another, for example in the past I was a software developer, a project manager, and now I’m a coach and trainer. You may have shifted roles too. Imagine you still have the skills you had in the past (because you could probably get them back if you wanted to) so in my case yes if I really put my mind to it I could still do web development work (and in fact I still do bits and pieces here and there) as well as being a Scrum Master...
Now imagine each table is a team and you’re creating a software product (any product) as a team. With the people in your team, do you have the right mix of skills to create a software product? Taking into account all your accumulated skills over the years.
Missing skills:
Value units
System administrators
GUI designers
Project Mgt Office
Community of Practice
Center of Excellence
Human Resources
...
Delivering value to others
(Concepts: start small and add..)