core
Team size, structure, and cognitive load
Team size is a function of how much system a group of humans can hold in their heads, not of how much work there is to do.
5-20 · 20-50 · 50-150 · 150+
intro
Ownership is the atomic unit
Almost every system, service, and surface needs exactly one owning team. Shared ownership is usually unowned, and unowned things decay in a predictable order.
5-20 · 20-50 · 50-150 · 150+
core
On-call that doesn't burn people
The people who built it carry it, always. On-call load is a design signal, and a rotation that hurts is the system telling you something the roadmap isn't.
5-20 · 20-50 · 50-150 · 150+
core
Design is not a paint layer
Design applied after the technical decisions are made can only make bad decisions look better. Its leverage is upstream, in the framing of the problem, not downstream in the polish pass.
5-20 · 20-50 · 50-150 · 150+