Data Roadmaps

Are you on a Two-Pizza Team?

A Round Conference Room With a Pizza in the Center

Do you know if you are on a two-pizza team? In the early days of Amazon, Jeff Bezos instituted a rule: every internal team should be small enough that it can be fed with two pizzas. The idea behind this rule was efficiency and scalability. Efficient- because the small teams can get more done in less time on collaboration. Scalable-because these small teams could be multiplied such that they work together to achieve larger common goals by accessing common resources.

Amazon followed another rule for scalability to work well: Every team should begin to work with each other only in a structured and systematic way. For instance, an advertising team should be able to access sales data from a dashboard instead of sending an email request to the sales team. If a dashboard wasn’t available, it needed to be created.

Imagine a situation in which a new data product feature needs to be released or a bug needs to be fixed. You don’t want this transformation to be a slow-moving process. You want an agile approach where waves of changes start to make the intended impact.

A consultant may or may not be working in a two-pizza team at the client’s workplace. It is, indeed, important to be aware of these principles and apply them wherever possible to model collaborative behaviors such as:

  • Developing shared understanding with the cross-functional teams.
  • Taking end-to-end ownership and agility in creating planned outcomes.
  • Connecting the tasks-on-hand with the common goals of larger teams.