Scaling an engineering department from small to mid-size is no easy task.
At this stage, the decisions you make have a big impact on your team’s efficiency, culture, and ability to scale further.
So, you absolutely need to get this right. Luckily, you’re in the right place.
We’ve recently written a guide on how to set up and scale your engineering department, from a small department all the way to an enterprise-scale department.
This is a companion piece focusing on the mid-size stage in particular, where we’ll explore how to set up your team, processes, and structure for success.
Let’s dive in!
Table of Contents
You need to start adding structure and build up your processes. But, don’t go too rigid – you need to strike a balance between flexibility and structure.
Let’s start with what matters most as your department grows – your team. We’ll cover how to hire the right people and set up the right team structure.
As your team grows, you’ll need to start hiring specialized roles.
While generalists that can handle a wide range of responsibilities are great in a small team, as your team grows you need dedicated experts like:
Specialists like these bring depth and precision to critical functions. Adding their expertise will allow your team to:
By adding them, you lay the groundwork for a more structured, high-performing team that can scale effectively.
And that’s key to long-term success.
In a mid-size department, hiring volume increases, and so does the complexity of the recruitment process.
Fully delegating hiring to HR or external recruitment agencies is essential, so you can focus more on your core responsibilities.
A standardized hiring process should have:
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Here’s a detailed overview of full cycle recruitment and everything it covers:
source: AIHR
So, as you can see, it’s too much for one person to handle, especially if they have a bunch of other responsibilities.
Also, a structured approach will ensure fairness, consistency, and efficiency in hiring.
And that’s key to building a high-performance team.
With the competition for skilled engineers at an all-time high, a competitive benefits package should become a key pillar of your hiring strategy.
At this stage, you can’t rely on salary alone. Top-tier candidates are looking for:
Also, knowing which benefits to focus on is half the battle won.
Fractl ran a survey of 2000 job seekers and these are the top benefits they’re looking for:
source: Fractl
A competitive benefits package will not only help you attract top talent but also keep your existing team engaged and motivated.
And that will help you reduce turnover and ensure stability as your team scales.
Onboarding is a critical part of hiring and a buddy system can make all the difference.
A strong buddy system improves productivity and ensures new hires feel supported from day one.
You should pair new hires with experienced team members from their department to:
This comes with a lot of benefits, like:
source: StaffCircle
Also, make sure to always review the process after the first month.
Gather feedback from both the new hire and their buddy to identify successes and areas for improvement.
As your team grows, you can’t stay on top of everything.
Team leads play a crucial role in maintaining team structure and efficiency, so you need to give them more responsibilities.
Let them take full ownership of key areas, including:
Empowering your team leads will not only lighten your workload but also build their leadership skills.
Trust them to make decisions autonomously and provide the support they need to succeed.
And this will allow you to fully focus on broader strategic goals for your department.
Without clearly defined roles, mid-size teams easily become inefficient.
And that’s a recipe for disaster. So, what should you do?
Start by:
A well-defined structure will prevent unnecessary duplication of efforts, save time, and allow your team members to fully focus on their strengths.
And that’s how you build a successful team.
When you scale to a mid-size department, introducing a hierarchy becomes unavoidable.
But, that doesn’t mean it has to be rigid.
You should keep it as light as possible to maintain flexibility and avoid creating unnecessary layers of management.
Still, there’s one thing that’s non-negotiable – clear reporting lines.
Defining who reports to whom ensures:
A clear reporting structure will reduce confusion, eliminate bottlenecks, and allow everyone to focus on delivering results efficiently.
And that’s key to long-term success.
No matter how capable your team is, sometimes you’ll need extra support.
If you’re chasing a tight deadline, tasks like QA, design, or maintenance can overwhelm your team.
And this is especially true if you’ve just started scaling from a small team.
So, you need to find and connect with the right vendors who can step in when you need them.
Start by identifying vendors with expertise in areas your team lacks and establish a relationship with them.
You should do this even if you don’t need their services right now so they’re ready when you need them.
External vendors will give you flexibility during busy periods without needing to hire extra people you may not need later.
Next, we’ll cover the main SDLC, communication, and performance tracking processes you should implement at this stage.
As your team grows, ad-hoc planning just won’t cut it.
And as you transition to a more structured development process, you need detailed planning and roadmaps.
Well-made roadmaps will keep your team on track and ensure priorities are clear even in the most complex projects.
Each roadmap should serve as a North Star that helps you track progress against long-term goals.
Focus on creating realistic timelines with clear milestones and dependencies.
Also, incorporate feedback from all stakeholders to ensure the roadmap is practical and achievable.
As your codebase grows, basic version control won’t be enough
You’ll need to introduce advanced version control management practices like Gitflow or trunk-based development so your team can work on features and fixes without disrupting the main codebase.
Here’s how they work:
source: Manuel Vergara Carmona
Gitflow, with its branch-based workflow, is ideal if you’re managing a large-scale project with multiple releases.
Trunk-based development is all about continuous integration, so it’s perfect if your team deploys frequently.
Choose the method that best suits your team’s needs and establish clear guidelines for branching, merging, and resolving conflicts.
When you scale to a mid-size engineering department, you need a formalized SDLC framework.
A well-defined but flexible SDLC lays the foundation for efficient, high-quality development at scale and ensures consistent quality across different projects
To start, you need to define each phase of the software development lifecycle in detail, including:
Clearly outline what’s expected at each stage and who is responsible for successfully delivering it.
For example, the planning phase can include detailed user stories and acceptance criteria, while the testing phase can specify automated and manual test coverage targets.
Also, here’s a tip – your SDLC framework shouldn’t be set in stone.
Schedule periodic reviews to identify areas for improvement and adjust it as your team grows.
Agile methodologies are the gold standard in modern software development.
Methodologies like Scrum or Kanban are essential for mid-size teams if you want to maintain flexibility and deliver quickly.
Scrum, with its sprint-based cycles, works great if you’re managing time-boxed deliverables.
And Kanban works well if you prefer a flow-based approach to manage ongoing tasks and priorities.
We recommend Scrum – it’s straightforward, easy to understand and implement, and flexible.
There’s a reason why it’s the most popular Agile framework, with 87% of Agile teams using it.
In short, Agile methodologies will keep your team focused on delivering value and help them better adapt to changing requirements.
And that’s why they’re so important.
To work efficiently, your team needs easy access to critical information.
So, you need to centralize all of your documentation to save time searching for information and ensure updates are shared consistently.
Choose a tool that supports collaborative editing so your team can contribute and keep documentation up to date.
Use platforms like:
Make sure to include everything, from technical specifications and process guides to project roadmaps and meeting notes.
A well-organized documentation hub is essential for successful knowledge sharing and communication.
And that’s key if you want to build a high-performance team.
As your team grows, keeping everyone on the same page becomes more challenging.
And that’s why regular all-hands meetings and team syncs are crucial.
Hold bi-weekly all-hands meetings to update the entire team on high-level goals, major milestones, and company-wide initiatives.
This will help everyone better understand the bigger picture and how their work fits into it.
Team syncs should be more frequent, weekly or even daily, and focus on resolving issues and blockers.
These meetings should be a space for collaboration, feedback, and problem-solving.
And they’re key to keeping everyone aligned.
As your team scales, inconsistent documentation leads to confusion, inefficiency, and onboarding headaches.
So, standardizing your documentation is a must.
Define clear guidelines for creating and maintaining documentation, like templates for technical specs, meeting notes, or onboarding guides.
And make sure all documentation is clear, concise, and easy to navigate.
Use headings, bullet points, and visuals like diagrams or flowcharts to make complex information more digestible.
Encourage everyone to regularly maintain and update documentation so it stays relevant and accurate.
As your team grows, formal sprint planning and retrospectives become essential for managing workloads and improving performance.
Sprint planning will help your team clearly define goals for each cycle and ensure everyone knows what they’re working on and why it matters.
And retrospectives at the end of each sprint are an opportunity for your team to reflect on what worked well, identify blockers, and refine processes for the next cycle.
Formalizing these practices will allow you to better track progress over time and spot trends in your team’s performance.
For example, if certain tasks consistently roll over into the next sprint, that’s a strong signal your team is facing bottlenecks or unrealistic estimations.
Start tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) to get deeper insights into your team’s productivity.
Focus on simple metrics, like:
They’ll help you identify any blockers and monitor team productivity.
For example, if bug counts spike during a sprint, this can mean you need better testing practices or clearer requirements.
But remember, context is king.
Metrics don’t tell the whole story – focus on a small, meaningful set of KPIs to avoid overwhelming your team with unnecessary tracking.
As your team grows, you need to introduce quarterly one-on-one performance reviews to maintain individual growth and job satisfaction.
These sessions give your team a chance to look back on their work, share feedback, and discuss their career development.
At this stage, your team leads take center stage.
Make sure their reviews cover three key areas:
Keep one-on-ones constructive and forward-looking, with a focus on actionable steps.
Next, we’ll go over some mistakes you should avoid when setting up a mid-size department.
Adding a wave of new hires without a defined team structure is a recipe for disaster.
Their roles will overlap, responsibilities will fall through the cracks, and inefficiency will spiral out of control.
So, effectively scaling to a mid-size department requires clear planning before you start hiring.
Define the roles you need to fill and map out their responsibilities.
Start building a basic organizational structure that includes your team leads and establish clear reporting lines.
This will ensure accountability and make communication easier, which is incredibly important as your team grows.
With more developers, come more bugs.
As more people contribute to the codebase, maintaining quality without a dedicated QA process becomes impossible.
And this can cost you a lot of money in the long run.
Bugs can be up to 100x more expensive to fix after deployment than right at the start:
This is where QA specialists and well-defined QA workflows make all the difference.
Hire dedicated QA engineers to handle testing and ensure code quality, while your developers concentrate on building features.
In short, investing in QA will ensure growth doesn’t come at the expense of quality.
And that’s why it’s so important.
Processes that worked well in a small, close-knit team often break down when the team grows.
Informal workflows lead to bottlenecks, miscommunication, and inefficiency.
Make sure to periodically review and adjust your processes to prevent these issues. You need to update and adapt them as you scale.
Introduce structured workflows, like a formalized SDLC, and invest in more capable tools as necessary.
Scaling is all about finding the balance between structure and flexibility.
Your processes should guide your team and keep things running smoothly without limiting their ability to adapt.
And regularly adapting them will ensure your team stays efficient as it grows.
Inconsistent onboarding is one of the most overlooked pitfalls you need to watch out for when your team grows.
Without a good onboarding process, your new hires will feel lost and unproductive.
And this will slow down their integration with the rest of the team and cause frustration.
Create a formal onboarding plan that includes clear documentation, mentorship, and training on the tools you use.
Assign an onboarding buddy to each new hire who can answer questions and guide them through their first few weeks.
Provide new hires with training on team workflows, technical processes, and product goals so they hit the ground running.
A good onboarding experience will boost retention, build confidence, and set the tone for long-term success.
Finally, we’ll share some tips on how to scale your department to the next level.
Scaling to a large department means you need to introduce a stronger structure.
A stronger structure will ensure every team has clear goals, well-defined roles, and the resources they need to succeed.
First, build an organizational chart to fully clarify team structure and reporting lines.
Then, choose a team pattern that best fits your needs:
Also, add even more specialized roles based on your unique requirements.
For example, if you’re heavily investing in AI, add AI engineers and data scientists to your team.
Just make sure they fit neatly in your organizational structure.
Middle management gets a bad rap, but it’s essential in a large department.
Engineering managers act as a bridge between team leads and senior leadership.
Their job is ensuring effective communication and that decisions are made at the right level.
Focusing on hiring experienced leaders who can handle both technical and managerial responsibilities.
Their day-to-day duties will include:
This added layer of management will allow you to fully focus on strategy while still keeping your teams on track.
And that’s why it’s important.
When you grow to a large department, good cross-functional collaboration becomes essential.
With multiple teams working on different aspects of your product, information silos are a real danger.
They lead to miscommunication, duplicated efforts, and costly delays that can completely derail your department.
So, to prevent this, make sure to set up regular alignment meetings with your team leads.
These meetings should focus on:
They’ll help you keep everyone on the same page and find ways how different teams can help each other.
And outside of these meetings, make sure to always encourage open communication and collaboration between your teams.
Start by introducing basic, easy-to-track KPIs like:
Then, you should pair these with quarterly one-on-one performance reviews to provide individual feedback and focus on skill development.
To make sure your processes are scalable, make sure to regularly review your SDLC and project management processes for inefficiencies.
For example, if tasks often get delayed because of unclear ownership or missed dependencies, your processes need refinement.
Look for signs like more miscommunication, repetitive errors, or longer development cycles, as these often indicate your workflows aren’t keeping up with your team’s growth.
Scaling processes is an ongoing effort, so make retrospectives and feedback sessions a key part of your culture.
Some good ways to measure team morale are:
Look for signs of burnout or disengagement, like missed deadlines or reduced participation in meetings.
Setting your software engineering department up right at this stage is a crucial step in your scaling journey.
As your team continues to grow, you’ll face new challenges – but, that’s a story we can’t cover in this article.
So, if you’re ready to dive deeper, you should check out our full guide.
You can find it at the link below – don’t miss out!
Mario makes every project run smoothly. A firm believer that people are DECODE’s most vital resource, he naturally grew into his former role as People Operations Manager. Now, his encyclopaedic knowledge of every DECODEr’s role, and his expertise in all things tech, enables him to guide DECODE's technical vision as CTO to make sure we're always ahead of the curve. Part engineer, and seemingly part therapist, Mario is always calm under pressure, which helps to maintain the office’s stress-free vibe. In fact, sitting and thinking is his main hobby. What’s more Zen than that?
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