[alecco]

AFAIR, the original idea of having silos came from Sloan/GM. Originally the groups were organized by function to reduce costs and streamline production. Say motors, wheels, windshields, etc. But this created problems because the end product lines didn't have much power over these groups. Some of these groups even became defiant as they were in high demand so they played the different product lines against each other.

The solution was to integrate vertically from the end product lines. So each of Chevrolet/Pontiac/Cadillac/Buick would have its dedicated teams for all it's neededs. No more delays and innovation was much faster. This turned GM from a mess to beating Ford.

The problem is this was seen as the ultimate organizational structure and Business Schools love magic recipes.

But I've seen the same problems in IT companies with massive Dev, QA, Production teams who end up antagonizing. Prom passive aggression (e.g. delaying approvals) to the occasional openly sabotaging (e.g. approving faulty releases). From experience, QA drifts into being the most political, Dev drifts into carelessness, and Production/Ops ends up over-reacting. This can be solved by integrating vertically.

But there is no silver bullet in organizational structures. There are many factors like culture, what's the product/service, the size of the organization, the geographical distribution of the teams and organization, and what kind of company it is (e.g. lean vs. moonshot).

[nonameiguess]

The article itself says this, but the original idea comes from the military, not GM. Silos aren't functional; they're mission-based. Each unit down to the squad level is capable of operating in an entirely self-sufficient manner, but the scope of mission it can accomplish alone is smaller than higher-level units. This is accomplished in part by having all of the functional specialists you need in the units together with each other, instead of having functional silos. It's the original matrix organization, where you get assigned some functional specialty and your career is managed by that in terms of what you're required to learn and master doctrinally, and it also determines your unit assignments, but your chain of command is orthogonal. Your career manager has no say in what your mission is on any given day.

Somehow, it seems like the military is still the only organization to really get this right, but they of course have at least two pretty serious advantages over private organizations:

1) The personnel can't quit

2) They actually get training budgets and dedicated schools and enough slack in headcount to send people away from their units solely to learn their profession and then go back to the units

[jadeforrest]

Well said.

I don't think you need a matrix management system, and actually kind of hate matrix management. In general (there are exceptions) I AM arguing for cross-functional teams. More like D&D teams, with Fighters and Wizards and Rogues and Clerics on the same team.

The management structure is a kind of separate topic. You can have cross-functional teams with or without matrix management, and I'd argue it's way better to have it without matrix management. But this is a complex topic and a separate one.

[dredmorbius]

I've got a memory of business organisation being classified into "D" type and "M" type organisations.

Sloan's model of a corporation comprised of largely autonomous divisions, with a central administrative department (legal, bookkeping, taxes, some marketing and the like) was the "new style" business of the 1940s -- 1960s.

The older monolithic structure was the "M" type.

Problem being that I can't find these terms readily (single-character terms tend to be search-averse). Do these ring a bell with anyone?

[afarrell]

> passive aggression (e.g. delaying approvals)

How do you tell the difference between malice and having a high task load?

[alecco]

Say QA dumps a badly tested release which causes a lot of weekend drama for Prod and QA does not own up to management or apologize to Prod (e.g. they did it under pressure from Business or Marketing). In retaliation Prod doesn't approve releases after Wednesdays. I've seen much worse than this.

[sokoloff]

Prod probably doesn’t even think of this retaliation; they just think they’re acting like the sensible adults in a company that just needs to “become professional” here.

A lot of company red tape was thought to be green tape when implemented.

[afarrell]

Yea, this sounds like the sort of problem described by Patrick Lencioni

[dgb23]

So people becoming defensive because they are not treated honestly, while everyone is afraid of doing mistakes.

[_y5hn]

That's when it get outright toxic. What is much more common is just all the gaps between solid silo walls.

[kqr]

By measuring the task load?

Edit: to be clear, I'm not saying any delay that isn't caused by high utilisation is attributable to malice. Just saying that if you've narrowed it down to those two, you've done the hard work. Those to are very easy to tell apart.