What shape is your team in?

Every team has a shape. The CDE model, from Glenda Eoyang’s work on human systems dynamics, names three conditions behind the patterns people make together: a container that holds them, differences that matter to them, and exchanges that move information and work between them. When one of those is too tight or too loose, you can feel it in how people work, see it in how the team behaves, and watch it spread into the organization around them.

Answer the three questions for your team. If more than one feels off, pick the one that feels most off. Then start at Team on the ladder and read up and down: the same shape shows up in the organization and the community around the team, and in how each person on it feels at work.

Container what holds the team together: purpose, boundaries, shared ways of working

too tightabout righttoo loose

Differences the differences that matter: skills, views, experience

too tightabout righttoo loose

Exchanges how information and work move between people

too tightabout righttoo loose

Balanced

A product team with a clear mission and a shared definition of done. Designers, engineers and support see the product differently and argue it out in planning. Pairing, demos and a weekly retro keep information moving, so surprises surface early.

1. CommunityHealthypeople outside want to join the team or copy how it works
2. OrganizationProductiveteams ship steadily without heroics
3. TeamHigh performingthe team finishes what it starts and learns from what goes wrong
4. PersonEfficacyI know what good looks like, and I can do it

Looks like

Stable, long-lived teams

Keep it with

Regular retrospectives

Next wise action

Keep watching. Balance drifts. Use the retro to name what holds the team together, so you notice when it slips.

Patterns, not a diagnosis

The agile patterns are my reading of where each shape shows up in software teams, with sources where a pattern has one. Treat them as patterns you might recognize, then ask your team whether they fit. A shape isn’t good or bad on its own: a tight container is a gift during an incident and a cage during a reinvention.

The next wise action is deliberately small. In a complex system you can’t fix the whole pattern at once, but you can shift one condition and watch what changes.

Sources

The CDE model: Glenda Eoyang, “Conditions for Self-Organizing in Human Systems”, PhD dissertation (2001).

All seven shapes in one table, with every level and pattern side by side: CDE configurations for software teams.

Sources for the agile patterns: Melvin Conway (1968), Fred Brooks (The Mythical Man-Month, 1975), Amy Edmondson (1999), Martin Fowler (2004), John Cutler (2016), and Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais (Team Topologies, 2019).