PODS
PODS ORGANIZATIONAL DESIGN SYSTEM
Listen to the Podcast
For CEOs and CTOs
Pods (~50 people or more) are investment-focused, customer-centric organizational blocks that offer end-to-end services. Guide them with your strategic vision and define clear inputs and outputs. Focus on the bigger picture.
For Engineering Managers
Grow engineering excellence within Pods (~50 people or more) to serve the organization effectively. Guide the Pod as a whole and focus on the bigger picture.
For Product Managers
Guide the Pod (~50 people or more) with vision and priorities to drive outcomes. Focus on the bigger picture rather than managing individual teams. Focus on the bigger picture.
For Agile Coaches
Experience PODS-based org design as the ultimate agile approach (i.e., individuals over processes). Help create and sustain these adaptive, result-oriented organizational building blocks. Focus on the bigger picture.
For Scrum Masters
Treat the Pod (~50 people or more) as your Scrum team. Collaborate with other Coaches and Managers to ensure Pod's end-to-end mandate for outcomes and improvements. Focus on the bigger picture.
For Consultants
PODS offers a modern product-centric, scalable, adaptive org design. It can be combined with many known frameworks and approaches. Learn more about combining PODS with other methods
Productize and Descale
Modernize your organization by adopting Pods
Productize
PODS helps you transform your organization into product-centric, customer-focused teams. Each Pod is a self-contained unit that:
- Owns a clear product or service domain
- Has end-to-end responsibility and autonomy
- Maintains direct customer relationships
- Operates with clear inputs and outputs
Descale
Instead of scaling up complexity, PODS helps you descale your organization into manageable, autonomous units that:
- Reduce organizational complexity
- Minimize cross-team dependencies
- Enable faster decision-making
- Foster innovation and experimentation
Key Benefits
Increased Autonomy
Pods operate independently with clear boundaries, reducing bottlenecks and enabling faster decision-making.
Better Customer Focus
Direct customer relationships and end-to-end ownership lead to better products and services.
Scalable Growth
Add new Pods as you grow, maintaining organizational effectiveness without increasing complexity.
Organizational Design
Org Development Vector
- 1. From 'divide and conquer' to managing holistically.
- 2. From managing dependencies to collaborative value creation.
- 3. From fast flow at the team level to globally improving performance.
- 4. From spawning narrowly-specializing teams to re-focusing and learning what matters.
- 5. From frequent expensive reorganizations to adaptive fluid org design.
Org Design Guidelines
- Each Pod is a profit center for investments in learning and collaboration in service of customer value
- has a distinguishable business model and product strategy
- carries economical accountability with profit & loss ownership
- fosters engagement of business stakeholders
- serves one or many holistic customer journeys
- drives clear purpose of existence that is being validated regularly
- encapsulates the whole product lifecycle (e.g. build and run, from concept to cash)
Avoid Local Optimization
To avoid introducing more silos and fragmentation, it is vital to avoid creating small Pods. A Pod can easily be a 50-people "team of teams" that is responsible for a product or service domain.
Inside a Pod
Understand how Pods operate and deliver value
Pod as a Building Block
Purpose of a Pod
The primary purpose of a Pod is to drive desired outcomes, serve its customers, and ensure a meaningful return on investment.
Not a Temporary Unit
Unlike temporary projects or virtual teams, Pods are built for long-term operation, fostering continuity, adaptability, and a consistent commitment to delivering sustained value.
Size of a Pod
A Pod's size is not constrained by arbitrary limits (7±2, <10 or 50). A Pod can easily fit 50 people or more collaborating together to drive the Pod's purpose.
Roles within a Pod
Pod's Strategic Manager
Pod Managers focus on the bigger picture of re-defining actual priorities and desired outcomes for a pod. They work at the Pod's periphery.
- Treat Pod as a worker, regardless of size and composition
- Provide necessary mandates to drive outcomes
- Focus on Pod's long-term fulfillment of purpose
- Provide clarity of purpose and current priorities
- Care for sustainable well-being of Pods
Pod Managers stay away from how Pods operate within. Multiple Pods can share Pod Managers, each focusing on specific aspects like business priorities, operational excellence, or employee satisfaction.
Pod's Creative Member
For Pod Members, a Pod is their home. They love it and take care of it. They learn to solve smaller problems with great responsiveness.
- Take pride in their work
- Collaborate effectively to get things done
- Maintain focus on Pod's priorities and outcomes
- Continuously learn and improve to stay relevant
- Can be either humans or AI Agents
Pod Members are proud of their work and maintain the bigger picture while handling day-to-day responsibilities.
On the collaboration between Pod Managers and Members
- Pod Managers and Members share the same high-level objectives
- Pod's way of working constantly improves and adapts through Pod Members
- Pod Managers provide reasons for Pod's existence and value generation
- Both parties learn to respect each other's perspectives and design preferred collaboration styles