Hybrid matrix approach can take the best of both flat and hierarchical and perhaps leave out the worst

This approach can produce a self sustaining nurturing organization that is both self healing and strongly mentoring supporting both rebuilding and strong growth environments.

The agile hybrid is established by the creation of a matrix organization where there is a flat discipline-based groups that are loosely structured on “guilds”. Instead of a manager for the group, you have a Guild Master who is responsible for the technical competence of the individuals in the group (specifically their hiring and maturation as technical gurus). The masters ‘review’ all of the individuals in their team, even though there may be well over 10. They do this by outsourcing the responsibility of 360 degree reviews to the projects that the individuals worked on. In an agile organization, this becomes an ideal model because you match the review cycle to the release cycle and do the reviews every quarter.

Projects in this type of organization become the verticals and they have full time masters of their own – project managers (scrum masters with delivery responsibility) and product owners. As part of the project chartering activity, a team is derived and then shopped to the guilds for fulfillment. When there are conflicts in desired talents or capacities, a portfolio manager will be needed to adjudicate disputes. The product and product managers are responsible for the day to day operations of the project and though the people assigned are not really part of the project, they report to the projects for the duration of their assignments. There is no multi-tasking between project as this dilutes the effort even worse than trying to get organizational managers to do real work.

This third model allows a minimization of overhead in the organization and a maximization of skill-based throughput. There is still a degree of finesse necessary to manage and maintain the organization. One interesting point is that the guild masters are typically the most technically advanced people in the org and yet they do not actively work on any project. Their success is the creation of journeymen who are every bit as good as they are and who can do the work with the level of expertise that reflects the guild master, yet giving the master more reach by extending his capacities. If the master’s 2nds are not operating in the same order of magnitude, the guild masters are not doing their job and the organization will never be able to scale.